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3232160028261Two for One Clickhttps://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/two-for-one-click/
https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/two-for-one-click/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 12:40:30 +0000https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/?p=2264Continue reading Two for One Click]]>“Let’s take a look at the BlogCast page!” said Lisa, our
Marketing Operations Specialist, during an, obviously, very serious website
meeting. The team busted into laughter at the unintentional mash-up title of
what would be our blog and podcast
webpage, but we haven’t since been able to shake the term of endearment.

So today, we’d like to introduce you to what we affectionately
refer to as our new “BlogCast” page!
Upon arrival, readers come to a fork in the road – “What would you like to do?”

Let’s explore your options.

Talk Nerdy to Me

From the new “BlogCast” home page, you can also choose to “Listen to Podcasts.” That’s right – we’re starting to actually talk the tech walk by recording commute-length episodes on trending topics related to paperless productivity. Hence, “The Paperless Productivity Podcast.”

With short descriptions accompanying each podcast episode, you can quickly choose the one that best interests you while you drive, enjoy lunch, go for a walk, or whenever you work in your podcast fix. Let’s say you’re super revved about Velocity 2019 and click on Episode 12. You’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this:

You can play this episode straight from your desktop, and/or
follow along with the full transcript. Not only does it save you the hassle of
needing to take notes, but it will help you fast-forward or replay to a certain
timeframe of interest.

Have feedback on what you’ve heard? Want to join the conversation?
Scroll down just a bit and you can leave a reply. As always, we read and respond!

Not “A Post” to Blogs

For those of you who regularly enjoy the dry-humored, yet fairly informative, blogs about all things paperless in the realm of courts, government, and insurance – thank you. As you know, we’ll never tire of typing tech-savvy text and hope you’ll continue weekly reads of the Paperless Process Blog on this new webpage.

Have eyes for a particular interest? Cast your gaze toward
the navigation bar and click the drop-down on “Blog Posts.” From there, you can
continue to seek something industry-specific for your specs!

I Have an App for That

Same. If it’s more convenient for you to listen through your
favorite podcast platform, such as Google Podcasts, iTunes, or Spotify, simply
search “The Paperless Productivity Podcast” and subscribe. You’ll stay up to
date with the latest episodes and never miss a guest speaker!

Enough About Us – We Want to Hear From You!

Will you be eyeing up
our blogs, tuning in for podcasts, or mixing it up with a little of both?

Managing employee growth at a company, along with onboarding and regular employee support, can put quite a strain on its human resources department. How can one department oversee everything from hiring to performance reviews to exit interviews and more, without losing its mind? Listen in as ImageSoft’s human resources manager Leanne Eastman and OnBase administrator Nathan Armaly discuss how implementing OnBase for our own HR department has allowed ImageSoft to more than triple in size without stressing out its two-person (yes, two!) HR team.

Read Transcript

Kate Storey:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks and know how to solve your biggest workflow challenges, and bring great productivity into your workplace every day.

Many of us remember the old Hair Club for men commercials, where the CEO boldly looks into the camera and says, “I’m not only the president, I’m also a client.” That bold claim instilled consumer confidence in the product they sold. By saying that the people who ran the company believed so much in what they were selling, that they were willing to use it themselves.

Signal to customers that they weren’t just trying to make some money, it was the real deal. At ImageSoft, we’ve had that same experience, not with hair replacement products, but with Hyland’s human resources software. ImageSoft has long been a reseller for Hyland’s OnBase technology solutions, and after implementing OnBase to manage our fast growing company, we’ve been able to see firsthand just how beneficial these solutions are for our customers. Here to tell us that story and the company wide benefits ImageSoft has reaped in the process, are Leanne Eastman ImageSoft’s Human Resources Manager and Nathan Armaly, OnBase Administrator here at ImageSoft. Welcome to the podcast Leanna and Nathan.

Leanne Eastman:

Thank you.

Nathan Armaly:

Good to be here.

Kate:

Okay. So before we start, tell me a little bit about yourselves and your roles at ImageSoft?

Leanne:

So this year I’ll be celebrating my 10th year with ImageSoft as their HR manager so ….

Kate:

Congratulations.

Leanne:

Thank you. Excited. So over the years I’ve seen the company grow from around 40 employees to present day where we’re at 138. I have a great perspective and experience in leveraging OnBase because we’ve grown over those 10 years and from where OnBase was before to where it is now. So yeah, I have a great perspective.

Kate:

Nice.

Nathan:

I’ve been here for seven years as of today actually I just remembered-

Kate:

Oh Nice. Congratulations.

Nathan:

Yeah, as of today.

Leanne:

Happy anniversary.

Kate:

That’s great.

Nathan:

So I’ve been all over the place. I had quite a few roles. I started in professional services, so implementing these solutions for our customers and then I made the transition to essentially doing the same thing, but doing it for the internal solutions at ImageSoft.

Kate:

All right. So has ImageSoft been using OnBase as it’s HR solution since day one?

Leanne:

Yes, definitely from the first day 10 years ago, I’ve been using OnBase from starting out and establishing an employee file management document system, to over time leveraging the OnBase functionality and applying it to address our HR challenges. Some of those challenges of course were addressing the quantity of paper that we used every day. I know we’re a paperless company, but we did use paper. So we had to change our mindset to, “Paper’s not my friend.” And let that guide us in letting go of how we previously completed our work, and whether that was the simplest task to the most complex.

There was no differentiation. We looked at everything from top to bottom. Nothing really was off the table. And we had to also address the challenge of synchronizing our efficiency and our effectiveness on a day to day basis as we were growing at a tremendous pace. Once we created those processes, we needed a way to have visibility in every step, and then once the process was completed, the ability to create some sort of metrics or to analyze and or present data to our executives as they made operational decisions.

So I guess it has to start somewhere, but over time we’ve just incrementally added functionality with OnBase to provide us with the tools to accomplish our HR work in a timely and efficient and professional way and honestly, we really haven’t looked back at all.

Kate:

Nice. I know Nathan, you were telling a story about what it was like that you said about paper, it’s still being central even though you’re a paperless company, it happens. And it’s a transition that every company has to make at some point. You don’t start off necessarily digital, especially if you’ve been in business for a little while. So Nathan, you mentioned something … What your onboarding process was like with a paper document.

Nathan:

Yeah, it’s a lot different now than it was seven years ago. Even with the stuff Leanne just mentioned, we may have used it 10 years ago, but it was, “I’m going to scan my document on a scanner and then it’s going to go into a digital file cabinet.” And that was basically it. Now it’s link and click a button and you’ll start onboarding and it informs 10 different people in five different departments that they’ve got to do things. So it’s grown a lot. I don’t think we can emphasize that enough how much it’s grown in the last 10 years.

Leanne:

But it was still a great onboarding process, right Nathan?

Nathan:

It was okay. It was all right.

Leanne:

Hey.

Kate:

Nice. So I’m sure many people listening have been in the position of managing employee growth like that at a company, and it can really ramp up quickly, right? So we know how important onboarding is, and that can bring a lot of different challenges and frankly, frustrations on both sides. So how can a technology solution helps support that growth while keeping some of those problems at bay?

Leanne:

Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. Onboarding is a very important event because you obviously you want to make it a positive experience that’s organized and professional, so the new employee can acclimate quickly to the company and to their role. You really want them to be able to hit the ground running, so that they can get through these onboarding things that would quickly help. That’s what I call … It’s what I described … It’s like the front end experience, the employee’s side of it. But we don’t stop to take a look back at the backend side of how the onboarding process works.

Like how do all those synchronized task and activities somehow come together to make it a memorable and positive experience for the employee? So I’ve heard many stories from employees who’ve been through our onboarding process over the 10 years at ImageSoft where one seasoned professional said to me, he says, “This is the best onboarding experience in my career.” And I was blown away.

Kate:

Nice.

Leanne:

Yeah, it was super nice. And he went through and just talked about it and it was really great to hear that feedback. And then of course there’s the other side of it where employees come in, they’re like, “I was blown away that I came to ImageSoft, I had a desk, a name plate, computer, an orientation document. Everything I needed on day one, my business cards.” Whereas the previous company I was at, I sat at a car table for weeks-

Kate:

Oh my God.

Leanne:

… and had to make my own name plate, and I had to wait a week to get my computer … And those stories are real and they’re true. Because I’ve heard him over the last 10 years. But that doesn’t happen here in ImageSoft because we have our technology OnBase to help us synchronize everything to effectively address the challenge. So in using OnBase and creating our HR events application, we were able to coordinate this process and the tasks for about five to 10 people across multiple departments. And we’re able … Just keeps everyone accountable so that everything gets done so we can consistently deliver that first rate onboarding experience every time.

We also use HR events to handle our promotions and transfers and off-boarding and we don’t like to talk about off-boarding but it’s the reality. It’s the same application that we use that just apply to any other event that we have, and it’s what HR has asked to perform in coordinate. And it’s been a game changer, and it’s allowed us to efficiently, really and effectively handle our company’s growth over the years. So we’ve gotten a lot better at it.

Nathan:

A good onboarding has that hidden effect of letting that person do their normal day-to-day activities right away.

Kate:

What they were hired for, right?

Nathan:

Exactly what they’re hired for. You get a lot of scenarios where somebody is hired on, they might twiddle their thumbs for a week because they’re not really sure what they’re supposed to do with onboarding. What forms do I fill out? What training am I supposed to be taking? That stuff. But when this stuff’s handled right away and they’ve got their computer, they have, “Okay, I’ve got these orientations set up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.” Then they really can start doing their job a lot more quickly than they could at a different place.

Kate:

Yeah, it’s leveraging, I imagine it’s leveraging that talent that you hired for in the first place, as well as making sure that the productivity remains and giving them that good experience, that way they know that they’ve made the right decision by choosing that company, by choosing you guys to work with. So now that’s great. So obviously HR management doesn’t end after 90 days. It doesn’t end after that onboarding process. Right?

Leanne:

That’s the goal.

Kate:

Right.

Leanne:

It extends beyond 90 days.

Kate:

Exactly. So there’s a lot of ongoing support that this department provides over the employee’s time with the company. And that includes managing performance reviews. So how did OnBase help ImageSoft in this area?

Leanne:

Yeah, performance reviews is very important process at ImageSoft, because we do a couple different types of review processes over the course of the year. So we have a quarterly conversation, and we also have a formal annual review process for a total of four. You can see this as an important process because we do it four times a year. I think it’s important for me to give a background of … Get a complete understanding of where we were at, to where we are today and how we leveraged OnBase. Just to show you the transformation.

So I will say over the many years we’ve struggled and attempted several iterations to create a sustainable performance review process, but we could not get over several hurdles to get to 100% paperless. A couple of these hurdles were the fact that we had unique ImageSoft review form and rating system, and we wanted the process 100% from start to finish in OnBase to include certifiable signatures that would pass the legal test. So that’s important from an HR perspective. And because we were growing at a fast pace and cannot continue with our manual processes and working additional hours and weekends to scan, upload, Index all signed paper reviews and OnBase every quarter, something had to done.

We were at the breaking point right? Where we had to really up our game. So we created the OnBase review application, and I’m happy to say for several years now we’ve been 100% in OnBase and really haven’t looked back. It’s an amazing process that addresses the hurdles and the time it took for HR to efficiently and effectively complete this process four times a year. I got some of my weekend time back.

Kate:

Nice.

Leanne:

Yeah.

Kate:

It’s important.

Leanne:

And we’ve just created some additional functionality after getting feedback from our managers, that allows them to have visibility and access into the all the previous reviews of their team members. So when they’re completing the current review, they can go back and look and so they can think about the things that happened over time, and that’s important. Employees need that appropriate feedback. So it really helps them focus on those reviews, and then for the employee, we provided an electronic signature process that allows them to write their own comments on the form and also just to have a copy of an electronic copy of it sent to them automatically with a click of a button.

It’s a big win when you can create something that makes multiple people in multiple departments happy at the same time.

Kate:

Yeah, that’s true.

Leanne:

And another thing … I think about the HR side of it is that, there’s a dashboard that we have in performance review application that, I can click on the dashboard and I can easily see where we’re at in the entire review process, who’s done it? Who hasn’t done it. I can look at ratings and then I can export that data and give our executives some data insights and some analytics to see where maybe they need to focus their attentions on some employees who are having some performance concerns, so it has been really good for them as well. I’m able to provide that just to the click of a button. It’s really good.

Leanne:

Yeah, that sounds very easy to do. Probably one of the most fun parts of an HR manager’s job is telling someone, “Guess what, you’re getting a raise, or you’re getting a bonus.” But when you have hundreds or even thousands of employees for even larger organizations, each of those have different salary reviews and considerations, all those things that you just mentioned. I can imagine the fun of sharing that news can be pretty quickly overshadowed by the tediousness of the process. So how does ImageSoft manage this part?

And then I had a spreadsheet and then I would get approval and then I’d go home on the weekend and I would combine the spreadsheet into a word document, copy the letters, put them in a secure folder for the managers to distribute to their employees, and if you have 10 to 15 people, that’s a pretty manual process for them. So it took them a lot of time away from them and then at the backend side of it, I was taking those letters and indexing them all into OnBase, every single one individually every quarter.

It was very time consuming. I know it was an important process and because obviously we love to give money out. But fast forward to today, the process is 100% in OnBase. Just so easy. It’s been amazing. We just drop a CSV [comma separated file] file into a location and OnBase picks it up, and creates the letters and I can quickly review them and to see if there’s any errors and there’s workflows that there’s an error, and I can flip it right back into the process. Just to the click of a button. And then there’s a secure distribution for the managers, and they can do it all electronically and paperlessly.

Where they type in, they click distribute, they type in a personal note to the employee, which is really nice to give that personal feedback. Like, “Hey, great 2019, you rocked it out of the park this quarter.” You can add those personal notes and you click a button and it sends an email with their bonus letter attached, and then the employee gets that feedback, and they get the letter. So it’s been really simple. It’s been amazing to see that transformation, a process that’s just before it took hours and weekends to really just minutes. So it’s been good.

Nathan:

It’s a lot of, “Set it, forget it.” If you remember those old infomercials now. Instead of you doing all that work. So that’s been pretty nice.

Kate:

Yeah. What really struck me when you were talking about that Leanne, is that we’re talking about making things as simple as possible for the employees and everything. But look at how difficult it was for you. I mean, you’re an employee as well, and it’s just interesting to me that process, while you’re trying to make things easier for others, created such a difficulty and such a long tedious process for you. So to be able to increased your productivity and to make sure you’re leveraging your talents in the proper way instead of having to do all of that paper shuffling all of that manual entry, I would imagine that’s a benefit for you personally, but it’s also a benefit for the company, because they’re able to leverage your talents much more easily, instead of having you stuck in these tedious tasks that …

Leanne:

And it’s for confidentiality. I was the only one to do it. You can’t just shop that out to somebody else to do all of that process. And I look at it as just a win-win for everybody. And that’s what I love about OnBase is that, it was flexible to handle our processes, our unique forms, how we do business, and that’s what I love about it and the functionality. So win-win for everybody. It really was.

Nathan:

Leanne mentioned a while back that we’re over 130 employees now. There’s still one HR manager, we have one recruiter.

Kate:

That’s incredible…

Nathan:

But in 10 years, we’ve increased the HR department by one only to handle recruiting. And a lot of that’s because, even almost all of it is because of the processes we’ve put in with OnBase. It just makes her job a heck of a lot easier that we don’t have to bring in other people to do those tedious things.

Kate:

That’s good.

Leanne:

I love telling Nathan, “Give me a button so this can just do this.”

Nathan:

I have so many enhancement requests from you. So many.

Leanne:

Yeah. I’m a number one. There’s a competition internally about who can put it in the most enhancement requests and …

Nathan:

Yeah, I have a chart of people who submit the most tickets.

Leanne:

He has a dashboard, and I’m his dashboard.

Nathan:

And after a certain number, their name, highlights and red, and Leanne is in red every single quarter.

Kate:

Right.

Leanne:

Because it’s addicting. It’s really addicting because you’re like, “Oh, I bet you Nathan can create a button for me on this one and I can just do it and it would just do everything, and I don’t have to do all these many processes.” So …

Kate:

And I bet she’s a tech as she just said, she hands out the bonus letters.

Nathan:

Yes.

Kate:

Just kidding.

Nathan:

My internal priority Leanne’s near the top.

Leanne:

What? Oh my gosh. The secret’s revealed.

Kate:

Nice. So another area of HR management at ImageSoft going off of the strictly employee internal side is industry compliance. So in our case, it’s the Criminal Justice Information Security or CJIS Compliance that is administered by the FBI. So it’s not a onetime project, but something that has to happen every two years in addition to the initial certification for new employees. So how did ImageSoft make this process paperless and maybe a little more painless?

Leanne:

Yeah, I’m sure we’re not alone in having to be compliant with some form of government requirement and ImageSoft had to have the CJIS Compliance. And I know we’re paperless, but initially we did everything on paper and to quickly get up and running and then we tracked it on an Excel spreadsheet. So the goal was first to make it a paperless process, so it’s efficient and effective, and the ability to be synchronized to ride, like secure visibility for those people who needed to see the information. And OnBase was able to provide that functionality and it’s some of [it as at] the end right now, the paper and the spreadsheets are completely gone.

I think that this application can be customized for any type of compliance and everything is in one spot in OnBase and, we are now in compliance. And so … Can I just say bring on the audits because honestly … No, just kidding. Don’t bring on the audits. But we’re ready. We really are ready. We have everything at the touch of a fingertip, and Nathan probably can explain a little more because he created the process. But I’m very happy that he did.

Kate:

Right.

Nathan:

Yeah, we didn’t always have to do this compliance. It’s a recent thing within the last couple of years based on some of the projects and initiatives we’ve been taking at ImageSoft. So it all came to a head where some of the people who were managing this were like, “Oh no, we’ve got to actually track this and then report on it and we may get audited.” So it quickly became this mess with paper like Leanne was saying. So they came to me like, “This is so unmanageable.” And OnBase is so simple. It makes things so efficient that we went from nothing, to a full solution in probably two business days.

Kate:

Oh my gosh.

Nathan:

Is when I had it up.

Leanne:

Yeah that’s no joke.

Kate:

That’s really quick.

Nathan:

Yeah. And it’s crazy automated. It’s one of the more automated processes that I’ve created where, all you have to do is add something into OnBase and it’s going to set up reminders and check boxes to say, “Hey, this training’s been done.” And it’ll set up alerts to say, “In two years you need to renew this certificate.” That kind of stuff. So …

Kate:

It’s very powerful.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Leanne:

I don’t have to think about it all the time. I don’t have to have a post-it note, “Hey so and so needs CJIS Compliance re-certification.” I don’t have to do any of that. I get an email reminder and so it just keeps me on track and I just don’t have to think about it every day-

Kate:

That’s amazing.

Leanne:

… and worry about it, because I worry about my peoples.

Kate:

Well of course.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Kate:

Yeah.

Nathan:

And again it makes you more efficient in other ways when you can turn something into a routine or turn it over to, “Hey, let the machine handle it for me. The computer handle it for me.” I don’t have to worry about it. I can go do other stuff and we don’t have to hire somebody just to manage compliance.

Kate:

Yeah the reminder function sounds like that’s really powerful too, because you do need to have that certification renewed. So being able to set a reminder ahead of time right? When you’re doing the current certification. So that way if there’s anything that needs to be prepared ahead of time, it’s not a mad rush. It’s not this scramble at the end, “Oh no.” Before they’re out of compliance again. So-

Leanne:

Right.

Kate:

… yeah, that’s pretty powerful.

Leanne:

And there was three people doing it, the process in the beginning, and now I just handle it and it doesn’t take me as much time at all.

Kate:

That’s amazing. So. Are there any other cool ways that ImageSoft is taking the HR department and its processes paperless?

Leanne:

Yes, definitely. We have a roadmap. It’s getting longer and longer. Some job security for Nathan. I’m just kidding. We’re looking to leverage ShareBase which is another form of a product on OnBase product and to handle it-

Nathan:

It’s like a Dropbox.

Leanne:

… yeah. It’s like a Dropbox and to handle our onboarding forms. We are paperless in the onboarding forms, majority of the time. But this process is going to make it a lot easier. We’re looking to do like a organizational training, tracking and documentation, where every department has different training requirements. So you have all the uniqueness of every department, but it’s in one solution. So we’re looking to do that. And then a big one is that, we have applicant tracking in OnBase.

So we’re looking to upgrade that to 2.0 and to give more functionality and to have that … I don’t know, just take it to the next level. And so we have a lot of different ideas. So we’re going to do that all in one. And then it’s more functionality in the performance review process. We’re working to do a self employee feedback as part of our performance review. So it allow the employee to give feedback on how they think they’re doing, which is really nice. And then the big one that is on the … For me personally is something called HR Incident.

It’s an application that … OnBase basically application that’s going to allow me to help track FMLA, short term disabilities, performance reviews monitoring for those that are struggling. And then also to help me with HR incidents, like harassment or violence or somebody notices somebody’s violating a rule or something like that, that they can report it, and it creates an incident and it’s all in OnBase. It’s all documented and it helps me track it. So I’m super excited about that one.

That one’s almost live right now, but we’re doing some testing, but that’s something that we’re really looking … It’s going to be probably a couple more quarters of work. So …

Kate:

Okay. Nice.

Leanne:

Yeah.

Kate:

All right.

Nathan:

One thing you’ll notice is, all of these different … I don’t know if disparate is the right word, but HR processes that don’t necessarily link together, are all being handled by one solution. So I’m speaking more from the admin’s perspective here, but it’s not like, “Okay, we have to go get an applicant tracking software and we have to go get an HR incident software and a compliance software.” It’s all the same software. It’s just doing all of it and we can customize it. And then if we decide in a year like with APP tracking that we really don’t like how it’s working, we can totally change it around and make it work more efficiently so-

Kate:

Without having to get a whole new solution?

Nathan:

… right.

Kate:

Scrap it and re-deploy and all that. So yeah.

Nathan:

Yeah. It’s very nice and job security.

Kate:

Yeah.

Nathan:

It’s nice.

Leanne:

Is HR supposed to say that? We joke all the time. So yeah, working relationship and he’s really helped us this whole department internal, the staff there and everything. So it’s been really great. So I feel a lot of weight lifted off of me having all these processes in place. So …

Kate:

That’s important.

Leanne:

Yes, definitely.

Kate:

All right. Well, this was really interesting hearing about how this all came together and how an enterprise content management solution, can manage some of those internal company processes. It’s not just the technical side, it’s some of those software skills of a company and how it operates along with those client facing ones. So I think it’s pretty obvious that ImageSoft is a believer in the effectiveness of Hyland solutions. So much so that we’re not just a reseller, we’re also a client.

Leanne:

That’s right.

Kate:

All right, well thank you both so much for being here today and for sharing all this with us.

Leanne:

Thank you.

Nathan:

That was a pleasure.

Leanne:

Yup.

Kate:

Yeah. Well thank you everyone for joining us today, and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity where we tackle some of the biggest paper-based pain points facing organizations today. We’ll see you next time. Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people. Which you can learn more about an ImageSoftinc.com. That’s ImageSoftinc.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharged efficiency, and accomplish your organization’s goals.

As the pace of business in the insurance industry continues to grow, agencies are increasingly looking to technology to help them better manage their daily operations and grow their businesses. Jeff Hiegert, senior customer advisor for insurance at Hyland, is taking us through the many different ways technology solutions are improving every facet of today’s modern insurers.

<table>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate Storey:</td>
<td>Welcome to the Paperless Productivity podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks and know how to solve your biggest workflow challenges, and bring great productivity into your workplace every day.
<p>Papers, and evidence, and claims, oh my. You know, I recently watched The Wizard of Oz again for the first time in several years and it got me thinking, Dorothy's arrival into Munchkin Land was just an insurance claim waiting to happen. If her house had dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East today, you can be sure that her evil sister would be filing a theft claim on those ruby slippers, and probably whipping out her cellphone to capture photos and videos of the scene as well.</p>
<p>So, how might the Insurance Magistrate of Munchkin Land, or in more realistic terms, today's modern insurers, pull all that information together to quickly and accurately process the claim? How do you keep multiple forms of information in different forms easily accessible across different parties while still providing superior customer service? Because even the Wicked Witch of the West deserves an excellent customer experience.</p>
<p>Our guest today is Jeff Hiegert, Senior Customer Advisor for Insurance at Hyland, ImageSoft's technology partner. Jeff might not be the Wizard of Oz, but he can tell us more about how we can follow the Insure Tech Road to find the digital solutions that will help insurers live a little more happily ever after. Thanks for being part of today's discussion, Jeff.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff Hiegert:</td>
<td>Thank you, Kate. I'm very happy to be here.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Great. So we had a little fun in the intro, but I know that one of the biggest difficulties insurers face is improving operational efficiency, especially as the pace of business in the insurance industry continues to increase. Why is it business technology solution the answer to that issue? What are some of the most impactful ways that insurers can use technology to make sure that their business is running more smoothly and efficiently?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Good question. Some time ago Arthur C. Clark said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So, who knows? Maybe I am from Oz.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>I like that. That's great.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Anyway, I think that quote really holds true with today's technology, whether it's artificial intelligence, or machine learning, or simply converting paper documents and the information that's on them into actionable data. What we can accomplish with technology today would appear to be magic to an insurer from not so long ago. Technology enables us to do so much more and be so much efficient and effective at conducting the business of insurance than we used to. That's really the core of most of the technology projects I've been a part of, it's how can we do what we do better and faster? More importantly, how can we do it more in tune with what our customers expect from an integration and an implementation, and an interaction standpoint?</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Yeah, it seems that the expectations along with that business pace really continued to increase. We'll talk about the customer side a little bit later, but something that I know in terms of expectations that insurers often have to face is the pressures from regulations and meeting state and federal requirements in order to stay compliant. I'm sure that adds quite a level of expectation and pressure as well. How can insurers implement technology to make sure that they're helping to manage those requirements, and make it easy to report out the right information?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Yeah, that's right. Maintaining compliance with both external regulations and internal service levels can be difficult. In many situations, maintaining compliance works directly against productivity and efficiency. So really, carriers need to look at leveraging the capabilities of modern process management and case management technology that can greatly simplify that challenge.
<p>I was at a conference recently, and one of the speakers talked about leveraging technology to reduce the cognitive load of the human processor. When you think about that, it's about your knowledge workers, your claims examiners, your underwriters that are required to constantly choose between what's quick and fast versus what's complaint. They may not always be making the right decision.</p>
<p>Carriers need to look at letting workflow and process management, and case management technologies manage the compliance requirements of a process. That enables their knowledge workers to focus more on improving the experience for the customer. There's no getting around compliance. The technology can certainly help ensure compliance without sacrificing efficiency.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Yeah, I can imagine that that puts quite a burden on the insurers, and those processes internally making sure that everything is managed well while still needed to meet those external expectations from customers. I know that that part of the technology really helps to help things internally, but what about customer-facing? For better business management, what are some ways that these solutions could benefit the customer experience overall?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>That's right. It's no secret. Consumers are becoming more digitally oriented. They look at the way they engage with their insurance company, and wonder why it can't be like other companies: retailers and banks for example. As a result, they're looking for, or actually more expecting, digital channels to communicate with their insurance provider to submit information and content, to access information about their policy or pending transaction.
<p>The carriers really need to understand how their current as well as their future customer base is going to want to interact with them and use technology to meet those expectations. That means establishing mobile and digital channels in addition to the more traditional channels of communication. That means making content available to them in a self-service channel, and digitizing traditional paper-based processes.</p>
<p>It's about using technology to meet your customer where they want to be met. In many cases, that's online.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Yeah, is there anything else that you think that insurers really need to be able to focus on? You mentioned focusing on now as well as in the future. What else do you think insurers need to be thinking about when they're choosing a technology solution? What do they need to keep kind of top of mind?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>I think it's important to have a plan before they set out on any technology projects. I've seen too many times where companies will acquire or build technology solutions, and then look for a problem to solve with it. That's never going to work. It's really important to get the business and IT on the same page in terms of identifying what the root business problem is first, and then kind of defining together what "better" looks like, better from both a process and technology standpoint. What does "better" look like now, and what will it look like in three years or five years?
<p>Going digital, or implementing technology, should never really be the end goal of a project. That's just the method by which the goal is achieved. It's important to pair up with a partner, a technology vendor that has experience and a proven track record to not only solve the business challenges of today, but help you set up a situation in an environment to help you solve challenges that you know will come in the future.</p>
<p>Again, it's not about just employing technology for technology's sake, it's transformation by design, defining what the end looks like, what "good" looks like in your particular business situation, and then the business and the IT side work together to come to fruition.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>I would imagine that a strong technology system would allow that type of collaboration, right? Because I think that's a good point that you made, that it's not just one department that makes these types of decisions. The business department has to work with the IT department, which I imagine trickles over into other areas of the business as well. I would imagine that having a solution that allows all the important stakeholders to be able to contribute and feel in the loop is probably pretty critical.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Yep, exactly.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>We've seen a lot of advancements in the core platforms that are available for claims and policy management. Do you think adopting a modern core platform is enough? Or do carriers need to do more?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>That's also a very good question. I think it really comes down to a wrap or replace decision. Carriers that have legacy platforms for policy management or claims management, who maybe aren't ready for or don't have the appetite or the budget to acquire a modern core system can look to solutions like what ImageSoft and Hyland provide that kind of can wrap around those legacy systems and provide them with the ability to run additional business rules and manage content, and manage processes and tasks that fall outside of the capabilities of those legacy systems giving them the ability to digitize things without maybe having to do the larger investment of a core replacement.
<p>If they are a carrier that is looking at replacing their core platform, or has already done so recently, you're right. Those platforms have made a lot of strides. They're much more flexible, they're based on business rules, you can adapt to changes in the marketplace, you can get products to market much faster. But those systems certainly can't do everything from end to end of a business process. That's where you still need systems and technology from a process and content management space to, again, kind of augment the capabilities that the newer platforms are providing, again, to manage the tasks and the content, and activities that need to be managed outside of that core system.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Jeff, can you share some examples of how carriers have augmented capabilities of their core systems with additional technology?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Sure. It looks a little different from carriers that retain their legacy systems versus those that have invested on modern core technology. If you're talking about a legacy system, one that's older, doesn't have a lot of intuitive user interfaces... So what I've seen carriers do is leverage processing content management or case management platforms to sort of sit in front of those systems and provide their associates, their underwriters, their claims examiners with a more modern user interface.
<p>We can use business rules and electronic forms to basically recreate entry to where it's a more streamlined, and a more seamless process for the end user to interact with those legacy core systems and they're not using the green screens or the mainframe type of technology. It makes them more efficient. It makes it easier for them to do their job. On the other side where you've got situations where you've got modern platforms that are in place, most of those have the ability to develop pretty intuitive user screens as they're navigating through a particular transaction, where those maybe fall a little bit short in terms of content management.</p>
<p>In those situations, we don't necessarily put a system in front of those systems. We put technology behind those systems that can render content within the context of the stream that they are using. If I'm on Claim Number 123, I can immediately render content or render all the documents that are related to Claim 123 so that the user doesn't have to use "swivel chair" technology by logging in and out of different systems and different technologies.</p>
<p>It's all about presenting the end user with the content within the context of what they're processing, whether that's sitting behind and supporting a modern core system, or sitting in front of a legacy system and providing a better user interface.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>All right, great. Where can our listeners find more information about insurance solutions from Hyland?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>I guess the first place I would have them start would be going to Hyland.com or OnBase.com, or ImageSoft.com. There, they'll be able to find all kinds of information about Hyland, about ImageSoft, about our experience in the insurance industry, and how we have helped insurance organizations achieve their goals, as well as information about our industry-specific solutions that are available to them. They can also, from these websites, request a demonstration and see how OnBase or any of the other technology offerings that Hyland has, can help them achieve their goals.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>Great. Well, thank you so much Jeff. It was really great to have you on the show, and I appreciate you sharing some of this insight today.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Jeff:</td>
<td>Thank you, Kate. It was a pleasure speaking with you today.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;" width="20%">Kate:</td>
<td>All right. Well thank you everyone for joining us today. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity where we tackle some of the biggest paper-based pain points facing organizations today. We'll see you next time.
<p>
Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at ImageSoftInc.com. That's ImageSoftInc.com. Join us next time where you'll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency, and accomplish your organization's goals.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

]]>https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/episode-13-follow-the-insurtech-road-exploring-insurance-technology-solutions-with-jeff-hiegert/feed/02234Bonus Episode: All About CaseShare with Scott Badehttps://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/bonus-episode-all-about-caseshare-with-scott-bade/
https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/bonus-episode-all-about-caseshare-with-scott-bade/#respondMon, 13 May 2019 14:23:48 +0000https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/?p=2245Continue reading Bonus Episode: All About CaseShare with Scott Bade]]>

The demands of the modern court system are multifaceted: Besides maintaining ongoing communication and access to records between the various courts, the public also expects convenient and even real-time access to information. For a court system still heavily reliant on paper-based systems, this can place quite a strain on court staff, and quickly create frustration among all users.

How can the courts quickly get up to speed and create an environment for seamless transfer of information and access to important records, while still maintaining security of sensitive information?

Today, we’re talking once again with Scott Bade, president of ImageSoft, about the latest technology that addresses these needs, as well as the efficiencies and time-saving benefits that these solutions provide.

Read Transcript

Kate Storey:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and know-how to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

The demands of the modern court system are multifaceted. Besides maintaining ongoing communication and access to records between the various courts, the public also expects convenience and even real-time access to information. For a court system still heavily reliant on paper-based systems, this can place quite a strain on court staff and quickly create frustration among all users. How can the courts quickly get up to speed and create an environment for seamless transfer of information as well as access to important records while still maintaining security of sensitive information?

Today, we’re talking once again with Scott Bade, President of ImageSoft, about the latest technology that addresses these needs as well as the efficiencies and time-saving benefits that these solutions provide. Welcome back to the podcast, Scott.

Scott Bade:

Thanks Kate.

Kate:

To kick things off, tell me, what are the challenges that courts are facing when it comes to handling appeals?

Scott:

Well, appeals have some unique problems, particularly because one court typically needs to transfer information to another court. Oftentimes part of the case file or the entire case file needs to be moved, and sometimes these files are quite large and complex, so it puts some significant burdens and time and cost upon the sender and the receiver, frankly.

Kate:

I imagine that there’s quite a bit of a cost that’s involved with that that can kind of add up quickly with all of those, that paper storage and copying and things like that. Is that all kind of part of the factors as well?

Scott:

Yeah, you could imagine. Most of the time, the upper court that’s receiving a file is going to want things in a specific format, and sometimes they even have standards of how that format should look. Things like the order of types of documents, stamping and numbering of pages in certain ways, all to make it easier for the appellate court or the upper court in some cases to use the information for their purposes because often an upper court’s requirements are different than a trial court’s. They

As you can imagine, when you’re dealing with what can be thousands of pages of records, and sometimes it’s boxes upon boxes. It can be very time consuming for a human to have to put that in the right order, stamp things, and then be able to deliver them to the upper court.

Kate:

I know we’ve heard horror stories in the past from courts who have said that they’ve even had… it’s quite a physical burden where they’ve had to bring it up from like a basement up to different areas or things like that where it’s not only kind of cumbersome in terms of just the amount of paper, but it’s also kind of the physical work that’s sometimes expected of these courts. It’s a lot of different elements it sounds like.

Scott:

Yeah, and a lot of times what the lower courts will do is they’ll actually send their master case file to the upper court and then they have to work something… if someone comes and asks for that record or if there’s a FOIA request, the record is no longer in the building. It’s been transferred-

Kate:

Oh boy.

Scott:

And whenever you move a sensitive piece of information like that from one building to another you stand the chance of it getting damaged or lost, so that’s a big problem as well.

Kate:

Yeah, it’s a lot of responsibility. When it comes to these things, what types of courts and cases do we find are most often faced with these kinds of challenges?

Scott:

Well, it really runs the gamut from civil cases to criminal cases, but almost all types of cases can be appealed. Obviously, the more complex case, the felonies, the big domestic cases that get appealed and even the big civil cases, those can present the biggest challenges because they have such a high volume of case records. As a case goes through its life cycle, if it’s a long case it accumulates more and more information and that just makes it more complicated, but it’s really cases going from a lower trial court to an appeals court maybe at the state level and even going from a limited jurisdiction court to a general jurisdiction court in a county. That often happens, or from a city court to a county court, there’s often appeals that happen that way.

There’s also cases, particularly domestic cases, where people… those cases last a long time and often, especially if there’s children involved and if people move to another jurisdiction, to another county, to another state, which happens frequently as you can imagine, that case needs to be moved to a like court in a different jurisdiction. That’s also… has a similar need for moving a case file.

Kate:

I imagine that it’s kind of difficult to keep track of that, too, if it’s had to move places multiple times, just trying to remember, where did it start? Where has it gone to next? It’s all part of that.

Scott:

That is true.

Kate:

Okay, so now we know what the courts are facing. How is a company like ImageSoft working with them to solve these challenges?

Scott:

Our main role in the courts is to help the courts go paperless, so we identify particular areas like this that need technology or can really benefit from technology and we develop software for that. We’ve developed a product called CaseShare in conjunction with one of our courts in Virginia that had some very specific state requirements for how the format of the case file needed to be transferred.

We looked at their need and we thought it was a fairly consistent need across the country, and even in different countries, and we said, “This should really be more than just a single solution. This should be a product that could be available to other people.” That’s what we did. We built CaseShare, and along with our customer in Arlington, Virginia, they helped us with full knowledge that this would be something that would be useful for other courts.

Kate:

Right. What are some of the benefits that a court like Arlington has seen as a result of implementing CaseShare?

Scott:

Well, a lot of the benefits… we’ve mentioned just time savings, cost savings. There’s also a lot of savings in consistency. They’re able to send things much more accurately the first time because the system helps them package things appropriately. Their format is very complicated in Virginia, as it is in most states, so to get for a human to remember all of the rules that are contained in the state statute for compiling that record is very difficult. The system helps them stay within the guardrails, if you will, of the rules and so they deliver. What they’ve found is at a significantly higher rate, they are accurately delivering the case file and so it doesn’t get rejected, which obviously when it gets rejected, that just adds to the burden and doubles the effort.

Kate:

Are there a lot of companies out there that are doing this that you’re finding?

Scott:

No, we’ve looked around. We haven’t seen very many… that was part of kind of our analysis in our decision to build a product. We’ve certainly seen some of the case management systems out there that have built something for their courts. I think most of those solutions are geared towards a specific case management system, and what we find in a lot of our states is there’s a lot of different case management systems, so having one case transfer solution that is built by only one CMS maker is not going to help all that many courts. We’ve built ours independent of a particular case management system and we’ve built it more generically so that it can be applied across states and across courts that use different case management systems and, frankly, different document management systems as well.

Kate:

Okay, and usually you’re doing some analysis by looking at how different courts were using this and everything. Why do you think that they were either building out custom systems or just doing them solely through here? Did you find that there just wasn’t something out there in the market for it? Or what was really the reason that you were finding?

Scott:

Yeah, that’s a good question. There’s probably a number of factors that I’d kind of speculate on why there isn’t anything on the market really like what we’ve built. I think part of it is the technology in the past, things like the cloud didn’t really exist five years ago and you really need that sort of kind of a common infrastructure for storing and moving large amounts of data, which the cloud provides. That was a big advancement that really made this possible. I think case management vendors are building things specific for their product, which I understand, and so it’s not really in their best interest to build something generic for everybody. I can understand why the market has kind of evolved to have very specific solutions and not so many general solutions.

The other thing is that some of the folks in our industry that set standards like The National Center for State Courts have really been pushing what we call the Component Model, which is basically a framework for building applications that are a little more portable and a little more interchangeable between courts, and so that’s… we certainly buy into that philosophy and this solution also supports that philosophy.

Kate:

I imagine… we’ve talked a few times about the Component Model here on the podcast, and I know that one of the benefits of going with that type of method is that it’s the cost and the disruption of things being switched around every couple of years. Do you find that… was CaseShare created to kind of help address that as well?

Scott:

Yeah. The Component Model has a lot of benefits. You mentioned a couple of them, but primarily it lets people buy the best of breed technology, so they don’t necessarily get pigeonholed into one solution or one technology. They can buy what works for them, and I think you see that in a lot of areas in technology today. The mobile phone market, for example, is fairly interchangeable between networks, so people can move from component to component and really use what works best for them.

The other approach is to use more of a monolithic system where one vendor provides all the components. That has some benefits, too. Things are probably better integrated together in general, but the cost if you wanted to change one of those components can be quite high because you have to change many components to change maybe a simple component. We believe in the Component Model and I think the market is also really moving towards a Component Model not only in courts but in other general IT areas.

Kate:

Are there any legislative or regulatory concerns that come with this kind of a solution?

Scott:

We do find that there are states that have put standards in place so that folks have to deliver things to the appellate court in a certain way and a certain format, and I think that’s a good thing. I think states should do that and I think Virginia has done that, so they have a document that describes exactly how the package should be structured and our system supports that. There are still some courts that are using paper. There are still some areas of the courts that still work with paper and aren’t ready for an electronic case file, so we see some of that as well.

Kate:

If they’re still using paper, how can ImageSoft best help them, then?

Scott:

Just because the upper court is still using paper doesn’t mean that the lower court can’t benefit from CaseShare. CaseShare is used to package, to format, to stamp, to secure, and to package up a whole series of records. The fact that it also delivers an electronic copy at the end of the process, that part could be taken out and you could print the record, for example.

I’d hate to see a court do that, but if the upper court can only take paper today, that’s okay. You’d still get 80, 90% of the benefits and it would also help you if you submitted something and it needed to be fixed because you’d have the original record in electronic form. You could add a page or add a document or rearrange things and then just reprint it. You’d have some obviously additional costs of paper and toner and things like that, but I think those costs would be dwarfed by the savings in human effort.

Kate:

I think it sounds like as you mentioned looking between files and things like that, it’s the searchability factor I imagine is also pretty attractive with having things in electronic form.

Scott:

Oh, that’s huge, and that’s part of the reason a lot of the appellate courts are asking for records in a consistent way so that they can find things. The nice thing about electronic records in a product like CaseShare, it does render everything into a consistent PDF format that’s text searchable, so even records that were scanned will get OCR’d so that they’re readable by a search engine so anybody can open that PDF or sections of that PDF and search for words. That text can also be stored in the upper court’s document management system and become searchable across not just a case but across maybe a whole docket of cases.

Kate:

Wow, okay. Is there anything else that a clerk or a court would need to know? Or what kind of other considerations that would need to be taken for this topic?

Scott:

I think from a clerk’s perspective, to me, a product like CaseShare is kind of a no-brainer. It’s one piece of really becoming a paperless court, which I think most courts today are striving for because they realize all the benefits. I think as you’re going through a process like this, you need to think about… we’re talking today mostly about the clerk’s needs, but there are other important parties, stakeholders in the court system. Notably, judges have very specific ways that they use case files and they differ significantly in most cases from the way a clerk uses a case file. Products like CaseShare and really just the whole digital case file need to take into consideration what the judge needs.

The judge needs to be able to work in a different environment that’s usually a much faster paced… a courtroom environment in particular where they’ve got many people and they’ve got to be able to find information much more quickly and really arrange their digital desktop, if you will, in a way that works for them in the courtroom. We work with some products that will also take this sort of layout and technology into the courtroom so that the judge can be as effective as possible.

I think that’s something we always have to think about as we’re talking about digitization and going paperless is that there are people, very important parties, and it’s not just obviously the judge and the clerks. There’s a whole slew of other stakeholders, prosecutors, folks that run the jail, probation people that also need a lot of this same data, and that’s were a flexible Component Model paperless system can really help all those parties.

Kate:

That’s great, and it’s a lot of really good information and a lot to consider. We’ll make sure we have all this detailed out in the show notes, but in the meantime, if someone wanted to go and get some more information and find out how they could get started on this for their courts, where could they find that?

Scott:

The easiest way is you can go to our website, imagesoftinc.com/courts/caseshare… is some information. There’s some good details on the product. You can also, obviously, call ImageSoft. We’ve got an 800 number on our website that anybody can call and ask for more information.

Kate:

Great. Well, thank you again, Scott, for coming onto the podcast today and helping us better understand how CaseShare is making a difference for the courts. We really appreciate it.

Scott:

Thank you.

Kate:

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we tackle some of the biggest paper-based pain points facing organizations today. We’ll see you next time.

Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, The Paperless Process People, which you can learn more about at imagesoftinc.com. That’s imagesoftI-N-C.com. Join us next time, where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, super charge efficiency, and accomplish your organization’s goals.

]]>https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/bonus-episode-all-about-caseshare-with-scott-bade/feed/022457 Reasons Why ECM Is the Answer for Insurershttps://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/7-reasons-why-ecm-is-the-answer-for-insurers/
https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/2019/05/7-reasons-why-ecm-is-the-answer-for-insurers/#respondWed, 08 May 2019 14:18:14 +0000https://podcast.imagesoftinc.com/?p=2237Continue reading 7 Reasons Why ECM Is the Answer for Insurers]]>Insurers may be asking, why should we consider
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) when we already have an (albeit old and
patched and inefficient and unsecured and siloed, and, and, and) imaging system
or a document management system (from the 90s)? We’ll answer that question in
our 7-part series: 7 Reasons Why ECM is the Answer for Insurers.

The insurance industry is facing rapid-fire changes
as technology continues to automate repeatable and manual processes. Robotic
Process Automation is taking hold in the marketplace as we see chat bots taking
on underwriting tasks, providing web services, conducting lookups – it amounts
to “no-touch” claims processing. The legacy systems from 20 years ago or more
cannot match up with today’s customer and employee expectations. Security
issues in legacy systems make insurers vulnerable to attacks that can cost
millions. Compliance issues abound as insurers strive to meet stringent data
security rules. Insuretechs are bringing well-received disruption by shaking up
processes and shaking out time-consuming, manual processes.

Enterprise content management brings modern
technology to the insurance industry
to streamline:

Content
capture

Business
process management (BPM) or workflow engine

Case
management

Content
management

Integration
with existing systems

Enterprise
file sync and share (EFSS)

Mobile
access

Part
1: Streamline Content Capture Activities

I don’t know about you but
there is so much stuff out there I want to watch and listen to and share and
learn about: new podcasts, original programming on services like Netflix and
Hulu, funny and educational YouTube videos, news and analysis from my favorite
commentators and late night hosts, not to mention all of the Star Wars, Marvel
and DC Comics movies – so many choices, so little time.

New networks and streaming
services are coming online all the time: Chip and Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper
fame are going to have their own network soon, Apple’s new streaming service is
about to launch, and the new Disney streaming service is coming later this year
– juggling my family, work and viewing schedule is enough of a Herculean
balancing act.

It’s similar for insurers –
they must manage, coordinate, file and secure a growing number of categories of
inputs of incoming documents, files, cases, applications, videos, emails,
photos, and communication records. The capture of content often siloed in
legacy document management systems becomes a nightmare because systems don’t
talk to each other, there’s no central platform integrating and coordinating
each system, and the automated workflow solution is MIA.

Here’s where enterprise
content management comes in.

Enterprise content
management solutions streamline the content capture of inbound documents and
information for insurance carriers, saving time, resources and revenue. They
reduce the time between receive and process. Whether the content comes in from the mail room, MFP, email,
fax, desktop, data stream, import
processors or
legacy systems, an ECM solution improves the content capture process.

World class content capture technologies help
insurers serve existing customers faster and more efficiently while helping
secure new customers. It all adds up to a better revenue picture.

ECM solutions
are available on premise or in the Cloud and offer applications for iOS,
Android and Windows to extend your solutions to the field for
Claim Field Adjusters, Loss Control Representatives, Legal Counsel, Sales
Representatives and more.

Next
Up

Our next blog in this series
will highlight how ECM brings efficiency with its business process management
(BPM) or workflow engine.

What kind of content capture
challenges are you facing?

ImageSoft can guide you through the selection of enterprise
content management for insurers to achieve the efficiencies and cost savings
you need. Our industry-leading solutions for insurance offer automated
workflows, improved speed and efficiency, reduced costs and proper compliance.
ImageSoft is ready to help your company reap the benefits from integrated
enterprise content management.

We’re gearing up for Velocity 2019! This second annual customer conference, hosted by ImageSoft, is a high-energy mix of success stories, industry trend sharing and a sneak peek at new solutions to help courts, insurance organizations and government agencies more quickly achieve their business goals by adopting paperless processes.

Kevin Ledgister, marketing manager for ImageSoft, gives all the details in this episode about what to expect at this year’s Velocity conference, and why it’s a can’t-miss event for anyone looking to increase their organization’s productivity, efficiency and connectivity.

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and know-how to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

It’s an acceleration of education, the momentum of which is unstoppable. The swift pace in which attendees can adapt these learning techniques is quite impressive, but you better hurry or it’s going to pass you by. What do I mean by this rapid exchange of synonyms? Why it could only mean one thing. Velocity.

For the uninitiated, Velocity is the name of ImageSoft’s annual customer conference. Where courts, insurance, and government organizations from across the country gather to learn how they can create a powerful paperless environment.

It’s become a hub for information sharing and an opportunity for like-minded forward thinking leaders to envision an even more efficient organization for the people they serve.

To tell us a bit more about Velocity and what attendees can gain from the event, I’m here with ImageSoft’s marketing manager Kevin Ledgister. Welcome back to the show, Kevin.

Kevin Ledgister:

Thanks for having me back again.

Kate:

So first things first. Why don’t you tell me, in your words, what Velocity is and what it means for attendees.

Kevin:

Sure. Velocity is ImageSoft’s customer conference where we bring in organizations from multiple industries to share their stories of success, discuss trends and developments and various disciplines, and to get a look at new releases in our solutions or sneak peek in what’s in our pipeline and we started this last year. We called it Velocity because we believe the solutions will help our customers achieve their business goals faster by adopting paperless processes.

So last year we held it in February, which in hindsight, probably not the best time to draw customers to Detroit and have to put up with some snow. Fortunately, the weather was really good but this year we’re holding in May on May 21st and 22nd, which is a great time actually to be in Michigan, so I’m looking forward to that.

Kate:

Yeah. That’s going to be beautiful. So how long have you guys been hosting the conference?

Kevin:

So Velocity’s somewhat new for us. We started with the conference last year calling it Velocity, but we used to have a government conference for years, which got narrowed to just a justice summit, but it left out many of our other customers and for those other customers that we left out, we’d have a separate conference around one of our solutions, OnBase, which is an Enterprise Contact Management System that we partner with Hyland software with, and we would have these other conferences and customers just loved what they learned from each other. They loved getting to know each other, and we thought, why not combine what we’ve done into one high energy conference and that’s what we did, and we called it Velocity.

Kate:

For those who have never attended, what’s it like? Can you give us a picture of what attendees are going to experience?

Kevin:

Well, besides snacks and food and a lot of fun, the conference is just a great experience. The first day we offer paid training options, for system admin and for people who want to brush up on their OnBase skills and learn different advanced features in terms of what they can do. And then for decision makers and higher level people, judges, and executives and VP’s, we’re offering a round of golf at The Inn of St. John’s, which is just a beautiful, beautiful spot to play golf. It’s in Plymouth, Michigan and it’s actually fairly close to the conference location is but then end the day with a reception, and we’ll get a chance to catch up and network at the conference.

So, that’s the preview day before the conference. Then in the afternoon, the next day, what we do is we have it packed full of sessions. So, we start off with a number of large group sessions where we’ll have the customer spotlight and a first for this year, actually a first for any conference that we’ve done, we’re actually going to have a session by our own internal staff to show how we use our solutions internally.

So while we’ve always believed deeply in the value of what we do for our customers, it really said something when we follow our own advice and demonstrate the type of operational efficiency gains that we tend to advertise. So for instance, we just did a webinar on how we use the OnBase Solution, for instance, with our human resource departments and our human resource department’s really a two person team and a number of years ago, back when I started, I think we had 40 employees and we had a two person team and now we’ve got over triple the number of employees and we’re still at a two person team and it’s not a two person team that’s pulling their hair out. It’s a two person team that actually operates in a calm manner, and that’s because we implemented this system that provides them with a lot of operational efficiency gains, that’s automated manual processes so that they can really focus on the important task, that human relation task and that’s just a great example of how we benefited from what we tell our customers and how they can benefit from this system as well too.

So, we think it’s just a great, all around, for customers to hear that we actually are using the system that we’re using.

And then, we’re going to hear also sessions by Hyland in terms of what’s new and what’s coming down the pipeline; some of the changes that are happening with respect to the OnBase Enterprise Management Platform. Then in the afternoon, we’ve got a number of different breakout sessions where we’re going to have breakout sessions focused on courts, general government, prosecution, insurance, and also some general business back office solutions.

These will include customer spotlights, solution demonstrations, industry discussions. So we’re pretty excited about this. Last year we only had eight or nine breakout sessions and this year, we’re hoping to have 12 to 14 sessions. So we’re really excited about it.

Kate:

Are there any special breakout sessions we should mention while we’re talking about it?

Kevin:

One of the ones that I’m really looking forward to is the session on multi-media evidence playback. Our prosecution customers have always struggled with this and if you think about it, whenever it comes to police work or prosecution, have to look at all the evidence, particularly video evidence, it can be coming from a variety of sources and also a variety of platforms so you might get phone that comes off the police body cam. It could be somebody’s cell phone. It could be CCTV recordings and those kind of multiple versions as well.

So to bring all that together in a way that makes sense and a way that can help people make sense in terms of what actually happens is extremely critical and then also making it work well in a courtroom and playing well in a courtroom is also a huge challenge as well, too. So it’s a huge deal for prosecutors and it’s a big deal. It’s amazing how some cases have turned because someone was able to look at video, and not just look at video the way that we look at it, but to look at it from pixel accurate translation and how they can see how very, very small details actually affect how things are actually going on. It’s really incredible. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a great session and we think that from our prosecution standpoint, anybody that’s really interested in video and just curious about what it all means and what it can all do, I think can have a lot of fun taking a look at that session.

We should also mention that our spotlight by Cobb County and Cobb County is the fifth largest county in the state of Georgia and they became our customer a year ago and they’re using OnBase in 37 different departments, which is amazing. It’s phenomenal to think about someone that had that kind of vision that could really use that solution to help go paperless and become more efficient in their government services to the constituents and so it’s a pretty powerful story. We’re excited about it and I think a lot of our customers are going to have a lot to gain from hearing how they approached it, how they got other teams to buy in on the vision, and how they deployed it and what it’s done for them. So, we’re pretty pumped about that.

Kate:

Great. Yeah. Is there anything new or anything else we want to talk about that’s happening at the conference this year that’s going to be really cool for people to participate in?

Kevin:

Yes. The Genius Center actually is a spot that we’re really excited about. It worked really well last year so we’re bringing it back again this year and that’s just where we have just experts there that customers can talk to, whether it’s about an issue that they’re facing, whether it’s about a business process that they’re trying to solve or a functionality thing they’re trying to get their hands around. Or, maybe, they just want to bounce something off of us and just to hear what we think to make sure that they’re going down the right direction. So, that’s a pretty cool thing that we’re doing.

Kate:

Genius Center is a cool name. I like that.

Kevin:

Yeah. It is a cool name calling it Genius Center and we’re getting T-shirts this year and hopefully it’ll be a lot of fun for them.

Kate:

Nice. Are there going to be some partners that are part of the conference as well? Are they going to be there?

Kevin:

Yeah. We’re going to have a couple of our partners, Hyland Software, of course, is one of our big partners with their OnBase Solutions, they’re going to be there sponsoring an event. We also have Kodak that’s going to be coming there as well too, and they’ll get a chance to talk with customers, so that’s another one that’s there. So customers love Velocity because the interaction that they get. Sometimes, it’s just a lunchtime conversation that turns a light bulb on makes their conference worth it. So we’re really excited that our partners are coming and they’re going to be there with our customers and customers get a chance to interact with their customers as well.

Kate:

Do you ever have non customers that attend Velocity?

Kevin:

So one of the things that our customers are particular to ask us is, do you have a user conference that we can come to? Do you have a community of people that we can associate with and learn from and benefit from as well as share; have some sort of information sharing. So, we say that we do on paper, but when we invite them to the conference and cut them loose and say you can talk to anybody, ask anybody any question that you want. Enjoy the conference and we’ll follow up with you after the fact, it’s a pretty positive experience for our prospects that have come, our non-customers, and it’s one that we’re very confident about and I think on that score, I think every non-customer that has joined us at a conference has ended up being a customer because of what they see and what they’ve experienced. And so, we think that’s cool that after the conference, they see that we are really people of integrity, which is one of our core values. That what we say on paper and proposals, is really who we are in real life and that’s pretty awesome.

Kate:

It’s a pretty good track record. Is there a cost to attend Velocity?

Kevin:

There isn’t for the one day of sessions and all the meals and everything included. The only thing that we charge for is the first day of paid training sessions and that’s just because the cost with respect to computers and equipment and technology that we have to leverage beyond the cost of conference so we ask people to just pay toward the training sessions, but otherwise the evening reception the night before, the night of the 21st, and all the sessions on the 22nd, those are all free and no charge to our customers and those who are invited.

Kate:

That’s a pretty good value. So, where can people go for more information and perhaps register to attend Velocity?

Kevin:

Sure. Actually if you go to our ImageSoftinc.com/events website, you’ll just go down to events. You’ll see all of our events done by date. You can see Velocity in May, click on that, and it’ll take you right to the registration page where you can sign up for the event, select whatever sessions you want and also go through the process of registering for any training or golf, if you want to do that as well.

And one other thing that we want to encourage our attendees as well too, is that we’re going to be doing some video testimonials this year. So we hope to capture people on video just sharing their thoughts about the conference or thoughts about their experience with their software. If you’ve always wanted to appear in pictures and have a chance to tell your story, we’ll help you tell your story in a great way.

Kate:

Come camera ready then, huh?

Kevin:

Yeah. Come camera ready.

Kate:

There you go. Nice. All right, great. Well, I know that’s just one more thing to look forward to this spring, and we really hope you’ll join us for this year’s Velocity conference.

We really think you’re going to get a lot of value out of it.

So for all the information on this episode and to learn more about Velocity, make sure you head over to ImageSoft’s website at ImageSoftInc.com.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and if you haven’t already be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we tackle some of the biggest paper based pain points facing organizations today.

We’ll see you next time.

Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at ImageSoftInc.com. That’s ImageSoftInc.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, super charge efficiency, and accomplish your organizations goals.

Technology makes our lives easier in many different ways…but can it help keep us safer, too? In this episode, Kevin Bowling, current chairperson of the Global Advisory Committee, takes us through the purpose and goals of the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative and how it benefits state and federal agencies throughout the U.S.

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks and knowhow to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

s our world becomes ever more connected, we realize the impact that technology can have in serving the public. Digital kiosks at your local department of motor vehicles, court documents available for download from your laptop, even text messages to remind you of jury duty. But technology can also serve an even larger purpose. Improving public safety by keeping criminal information easily accessible among members of the justice community around the global. That is the goal of the global justice information sharing initiative, led by the global advisory community, to help steer and facilitate these global justice information sharing goals.

Joining us today is Kevin Bowling, current chairperson of the Global Advisory Committee, Court Administrator for Michigan’s 20th Circuit Court and former President of the National Association for Court Management. So he will some excellent insight to share on this. Kevin, thanks for joining us today.

Kevin Bowling:

Thank you Kate, I really appreciate the opportunity to join you for this podcast and to share a little bit about the work of the Global Advisory Committee.

Kate:

Great. So first, before we get started, can you tell us a bit more about what the Global Advisory Committee is, who it serves, what it does?

Kevin:

Sure. Often times, Global is referred to as a group of groups. It represents more than 30 independent organizations, that span the spectrum of law enforcement, judicial organizations, correctional facilities and other related bodies. The reason we come together has to do with the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, which was started at the federal level 18 years ago and Global as an organization is actually a Federal Advisory Committee. In that role, we advise the U.S. Attorney General on justice information sharing and integration initiatives.

We were really created to support the broad scale exchange of justice and public safety information. We promote standards based electronic information exchange, just to make sure that the entire justice community has timely, accurate, complete and accessible information that can be shared in a secure and trusted environment.

Kate:

Okay. Yeah. And I know that the mission of the committee is described as being the efficient sharing of data among justice entities and I know that group describes that as being at the very heart of modern public safety in law enforcement. So what does that mean to you and into the group?

Kevin:

Well, I think two of those words that you used in your intro really get to the heart of the matter and that’s public safety. That’s really what we’re trying to support through the work of the Global Advisory Committee. We want to support those people that are keeping our nation and our community safe. There are threats to our safety that come from not just elsewhere in the world, but sometimes just around the block and often our recommendations or the resources that we produce are helpful to law enforcement and other justice agencies in learning some of the new technology that’s available or best practices for information sharing, so that we can really focus on this primary issue of public safety.

Kate:

Yeah, that’s definitely a really important initiative and I’m sure that the committee really works hard to focus on that. So, what do you feel is the impact of the type of this information sharing? What kind of impact does that have, like you said, not only around the country, perhaps around the globe, but right here in your own neighborhood?

Kevin:

Well, there are a lot of different impacts Kate, and I can’t over emphasize any of these. Something that I think many of your listeners are familiar with as an example is the alert system. People have heard about things like amber alerts that exist, when there is a missing child and if a child’s been abducted or endangered in some way, then these amber alerts can go out. Well, when amber alerts started, that was part of efforts with the Global Advisory Committee and the Bureau of Justice Assistance and other information sharing groups.

We also have blue alerts, that are available for law enforcement when we’re trying to help deal with violent criminals, who may pose a direct and imminent threat to law enforcement or to different communities. And we looked at starting other kinds of alerts, like silver alerts for example, that might focus on information exchange, that would help the elderly and more vulnerable populations.

That’s one specific example, just the alert system, to share information, but we also look at nationally recognized protection of privacy and civil liberties. When we start talking about sharing information, a lot of information, often times it can be very sensitive information or private information and one of the things that Global has been able to do very effectively, is not just to look at the side of sharing information, but also to provide training materials and resources for justice agencies, about the importance of privacy issues and civil liberty issues that go hand in hand with information sharing.

That’s the real critical part of our mission, as well as providing standards, adopting standards so that when law enforcement or other justice agencies are comparing information or sharing information, that we’re able to speak the same language, that we have a similar, if you will, data dictionary. So that when it’s important to compare apples with apples, we’re doing that well and not comparing apples with oranges.

Those are all parts of how the Global Advisory Committee looks at working its mission with that efficient sharing of data among justice entities. We want to do it in ways that are going to be helpful, are going to allow our justice agencies across the country to be more responsive and to be able to help folks in our communities in very tangible ways.

Kate:

Yeah, that’s really encompassing in many different ways as you mentioned physical safety, information safety, there is a lot of different elements that especially as our society progresses from a technological perspective, that we all really need to be well connected and as you said, speaking the same language for that. Especially when you mentioned the alerts and everything, it sounds like technology plays really a large part in this. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Kevin:

I’m going to do my best Kate for that. But I’m going to do it with a caveat. One of the reasons I got involved with the Global Advisory Committee and in my role there, I represent the National Association for Court Management, which is the largest court management organization in the world. And we represent court administrators and frontline court managers in every state in the country and in a variety of other countries as well.

But one of the things that I learned in my job is that I am not a technologist. So when you ask me a technology question, it’s always interesting to think about how I’m going to respond, because I know my limitations there and part of my motivation for becoming part of Global was to learn more about technology, since it really does have an impact on how we do business and how we can do a better job going forward.

So I pulled out a couple of specific examples, that are part of what we refer to as the Global Standards Package and all of this information is online and available for any of your listener’s, if they’re interested and I can give you the website later on if you like. But even just a quick search for global will take you to our information sharing page.

But with our global standards and this is part of the technology answer, we have something called a Global Reference Architecture. And it’s well designed technology architecture that allows various kinds of computer systems to talk with each other and to share information. And to do it in a safe and trusted way. We also, in that package, have what we affectionately refer to GFIPMS, which is the Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management Standards and this is a framework that provides guidelines and standards for figuring out who should have access, what kind security should be built into information exchanges at a technology level.

And then we also, one thing that we’re very proud of, that we worked on in its early stages and it has grown way beyond our expectations on the Global Advisory Committee and it’s something that is called the National Information Exchange Model, or NIEM. This is a data model, sort of a standards based approach to exchanging information. So we help eliminate confusion that’s associated with different data definitions, across law enforcement and public organizations, by providing a common vocabulary, that ensures consistency and understanding among state, federal, local and tribal agencies that we’re trying to serve.

So those are just a few examples of some of the technology standards or frameworks that the global advisory committee has developed over the years to help make sure that as new or emerging technologies come into play, that we have systems that can really talk to each other. I think where this came out most clearly many years ago and something that your listeners would, I’m sure, resonate with, was during 9/11, when we had that national catastrophe effect us and agencies started rushing in to assist with the carnage that was caused, it did not take very long to figure out that there was not a lot of inter-connectivity between different branches of government, among different law enforcement agencies or first responders.

Many of our technology systems failed us because they didn’t talk to each other. And out of that kind of experience, groups like the Global Advisory Committee have been working for many years to produce better products, that first responders, law enforcement and justice partners can use, to make sure that we can share information quickly, safely, with the proper protections in place for everyone involved and do it so that we can, again, focus on that earlier issue that we talked about, of public safety.

Kate:

Absolutely. So it’s sounds like, this committee has really been looking at all the different facets of this and you could see how it’s all coming together at a broad level. But is there a way that the justice community can be involved in supporting these efforts at a more local level? That they can be involved in this as well?

Kevin:

There really is a great way Kate and it’s something that, in fact, I would guess that even some ImageSoft products, like OnBase and through electronic filing systems and other systems that you support directly, where local justice agencies and courts could really do a better job. One specific example that I wanted to mention, has to do with disposition reporting.

So once cases come through the legal system, if we’re talking about criminal cases, at the end of the case there’s a disposition. A judge makes a ruling, somebody’s either convicted of an offense or they’re not. And if they’re convicted, what’s the sentence going to be. So all of that information rolls into something that we call a disposition on that case.

Well, there’s supposed to be reporting across the country, that goes back into tribal or local or state or national databases, where public safety agencies can go and look and see whether somebody’s got a criminal record. But if dispositions are not reported accurately or in a timely way, that information in those databases, are incomplete or inaccurate and that means there could be information on dispositions coming from courts that are not properly reported somewhere and maybe you’ve got a local law enforcement person that pulls somebody over on a traffic stop and because they don’t know that that person may have three convictions for assault or has previously assaulted a law enforcement officer or is suspected of carrying weapons or something along those lines, that local law enforcement may have no clue what they’re walking up to.

So it’s that kind of real life issue that we’re trying to do a better job with, when we look right down at the local level, at local law enforcement and at the local court level, of how we can do better for each other. How can do a better job of sharing information like dispositions. Recently, just last week, we had one of our Global Advisory Committee meetings in Washington, D.C. and I had a fascinating conversation with one of our members, who represents Indian country, represents a number of tribal organizations around the country and he explained because of some of the lack of resources that they have in many tribal agencies, dispositions are not regular reported at all.

We’ve got, in a state like Michigan, where we’ve got over a dozen federally recognized tribes and perhaps a lot of law enforcement activity that would go on in those areas, it’s very important that that information gets reported in timely and accurate fashion.

So I guess to answer your question about how can states both help and benefit or local law enforcement or justice agencies can help or benefit, it’s really focusing on sharing the information that is critical to all of our work and doing that in timely way. And there are systems that all of us know about that are available to report that kind of information.

Here in Michigan, most of that gets reported through Michigan State Police, through our law enforcement information network. And it may vary a little bit from state to state, but unlike on many law enforcement TV shows, where we watch folks with high tech gadgets or tables that can access information bases all over the world, a lot of local law enforcement agencies don’t have those kind of resources available to them.

So we really have to focus on the few standardized access points that will really help them do their job well.

Kate:

Excellent. So there’s no cone of silence in most of organizations is what you’re saying?

Kevin:

Yes. In most instances, there isn’t, that’s a great point Kate, there isn’t a cone of silence, most of this information is public information, it may be considered sensitive information and there may different levels of access for people who need it versus people who don’t need access to it, but we need to do a better job sharing as much as we possibly can, to keep everybody safe.

Kate:

That’s an excellent point.

Kevin:

Yes. Another example that immediately comes to mind, in the technology and the business world, we hear a lot today about evidence based practices and how we can do our work better by using evidence based practices, things that are tried and true and are supported by data. One of the areas where local courts, law enforcement agencies, correctional facilities, can all benefit from best practices, many of us are now using risk assessment instruments. Where we can share information about a person’s prior criminal history, about current offenses, about how they have fared in different correctional facilities and we can use these evidence based risk assessments that can also be automated for quick sharing of information and do a better job of focusing on behaviors that are either likely to be repeated in the future or not likely to be repeated.

So if we have folks that have a very low risk assessment, perhaps they don’t need to be using local jail or state wide prison resources and maybe they can be safely in the community, where using these risk assessments, if you have somebody that is a high risk and a clear danger to public safety, then you have better information to figure out how to handle that individual going forward.

So it’s a very important part of how we do our work and how we can improve how we do our work every day.

Kate:

Absolutely. And you said that there was a lot of this information, as you mentioned, is available, especially the work of the committee, is all available on a website you mentioned, you would mind sharing that real quick, so everybody can check it out?

Kevin:

Sure. If someone were to search for OJP, which stands for the Office of Justice programs, ojp.gov/global. That will take them to the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative site and there, they can learn about a variety of resources. I had mentioned that global has been around for 18 years and in that time, we have created over 600 deliverables, different kinds of position papers on a variety of topics, specific templates for justice agency partners that can help them in creating policies or figuring out how to better share information.

Just to give you a couple of examples, I’m sure many of your listener’s have either seen on TV or heard over the last few years about the explosion of body worn cameras by law enforcement. So one of the things that we did when law enforcement started using cameras, is that we had to start looking at digital evidence and how are prosecutors or defense attorney’s or courts going to deal with digital evidence that’s now coming as videos from these body worn cameras. A lot of justice partners were not prepared for the explosion of this information, the volume of the information, in figuring out how it can best be used, whether it’s in the courtroom setting or investigation setting or otherwise. So that’s something that was really important, that we were able to help with.

When we started trying to figure out what is going on with identity theft as another example, where that became a big issue nationwide, still is, when we’re looking at how to protect personal information, we put together some resource bulletins and trading for justice partners about understanding digital footprints. What bad actors might be looking for, how they might want to steal your identity and profit from it.

So putting together guidance like that are all things that the Global Advisory Committee has worked very carefully on and tried to provide this kind of documentation for people working in the justice sector and it’s all available online and all of our meetings also are open to the public. So that’s something that some of your listener’s might be interested in.

Obviously, with lots of different information that’s out there, it can be mind numbing, trying to figure out what you’re looking for or what you might need and how it may help you. So one other tool that we created is something that goes by the acronym of GIST, it’s the Global Information Sharing Toolkit and it would allow someone, again, going to that same website and again, I’ll give you the full website again, www.it.ojp.gov/GIST, G-I-S-T.

And going there, anyone that’s listening could set up their own toolkit. You can go and peruse the various training materials, the reference documents, different resource bulletins that have been developed and you can create your own online toolkit of what would be most helpful for you and have it available to you whenever you need it.

So that’s another we’ve tried to make it easier for folks working in different justice domains, to be able to participate and use the materials that are available and hopefully, if they find them helpful, we’ll get some feedback or if there’s something else that they feel like it’s missing, then we can try to work on that as well.

Kate:

That’s really helpful. And this is so much excellent information, we’ll make sure to have everything listed in the transcript, especially those websites. On the ImageSoft website, so anyone who’s listening, if you wanted to go back and find those websites, we’ll make sure that we have all of that listed there, so that you can go and use some of these tools and hopefully provide some additional feedback.

Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today Kevin, this was, I think, really insightful and hopefully it’s a great resource and perhaps even starting point for a lot of organizations that want to become involved in this as well.

Kevin:

Well, I certainly hope so and like I said at the beginning, I really appreciate the, I guess, the willingness of ImageSoft to reach out to a group like the Global Advisory Committee and give us a way to share some of this information with your listeners. I think I mentioned to you earlier, having been an ImageSoft customer for many years now, I’ve seen the value of the work that you do and I know that even in our own court, by using the OnBase software and working with your staff on our current e-filing project here in Michigan, by using those tools that you make available, it allows us to do a better job at a local level, providing information that needs to be shared with other local agencies, state agencies and federal agencies.

So it’s really been beneficial to have those kinds of tools to help support our mission for better information sharing. So I just wanted to mention that and thank you again for giving us an opportunity to talk a little bit about why Global matters, what we’re doing, how we’re trying to support our justice system partners and hopefully, in the end, providing safer communities for all of us to live in and thrive in.

Kate:

Thank you much Kevin, that’s absolutely true. And thank you everyone for joining us today and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we’ll tackle some of the biggest paper based pain points facing organizations today.

We’ll see you next time.

Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by Image Soft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at imagesoftinc.com, that’s Image Soft, I-N-C.com. Join us next time, where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, super charge efficiencies and accomplish your organization’s goals.

In part two of a two-part episode, Kevin Ledgister, marketing manager for ImageSoft (a reseller of Hyland’s OnBase solution), shares some quick tips for using OnBase to supercharge your agency’s efficiency.

Read Transcript

Kate Storey:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and know-how to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

Last time we talked about ten great ways that government agencies can leverage a technology solution like OnBase to help meet their needs in 2019. So today, we’re gonna continue on with that list, and if you haven’t already listened to that first half of the list, make sure you go back to our last episode and get all caught up.
So, Kevin, you ready to dive back into this?

Kevin Ledgister:

Yes, I’m ready. Let’s dive right in.

Kate:

Alright.

Kevin:

Number 11. I’ll just do this one quickly, it’s just that [00:00:45] (OnBase) provide a way for the public to search for documents and also for you to internally to handle redaction’s. So a lot of times you may have a document with some sensitive information on there, but because of transparency laws, it needs to be shared publicly but it can be redacted, so you can redact the documents by highlighting sensitive areas in a document and redact them out and then share the redacted copy out to the public so that they can search it, view it, access it, download it, but they can’t see the information behind the redaction.

And then within OnBase itself, you can actually keep an un-redacted copy that only internal employees can actually take a look at and that way maintain that confidentiality and sensitivity that’s required for certain kinds of information. So that’s one of the great things that you can do as well too is make your documents searchable by the public and also protect sensitive information that’s actually in there.

Number 12. This is one that a lot of people don’t think about, but think of all the people, whether you’re a real estate organization, whether you’re tracking employee certifications, whether you’ve got different training that you need to just track in terms of completion of training, OnBase provides you a way that you can not only track all those certifications and continuing education credits and those types of things and licenses that need to be maintained, but you can track the expiration of those as well.

You can track and make sure that enough things are being submitted with enough credits to make sure that employees are staying current, and you can also use this to track different vendor partners, different people that are out there as well.
So we did one solution, for instance, where we’re tracking real estate licenses for all the real estate agents in a particular city, and we were able to track all of those, have them in, make sure that they’re staying up to date with their training, who the licenses are being parked with. So as new things are coming in, we had a great spot where they could track that and just maintain that. That’s one of the small tricky things that nobody really thinks about, but it turned out to be a huge solution and huge time saver and it’s one that you could take a look at in terms of OnBase.

Number 13 kind of goes along with that. So not only do we use the case management features in OnBase to design something to track real estate licenses, but we’re also using the same features and functionalities that’s in OnBase to be able to track criminal codes, so think about every time a new criminal code or a new civil code or whatever, charging code that needs to be tracked by judges and attorneys and lawyers and legislative, you can use the OnBase system to actually track those.

So when a revision gets made or a new piece. For instance you may have a criminal code that talks about breaking and entering and maybe you want to add a new category to that because some new type of crime has cropped up that you knew to address, if you want to have a subtext of that code, maybe you’re going to update an existing code or you wanna track, here’s a new version, but here’s a previous version, OnBase does that beautifully. You can track who accesses it and you can also make that available to the public as well, so if they wanna search criminal codes they can do that as well.

So a lot of great things you can do, just being able to track, not only criminal codes, but also anything else that you wanna do, that would fit into that category. In terms of what data do I need to track in a system that I don’t wanna build an active data base that’s out there, I don’t wanna track it in excel, I don’t wanna just handle some sort of electronic PDF that I can’t tell from version to version OnBase makes it an ideal solution for things like that.

Kate:

Yeah and that’s where I think the [inaudible 00:04:34] goes beyond just logistical elements and some of the daily tasks and workflow elements, this is where you start to see how agencies have to work with public safety as well and how a technology solution can really help in that aspect as well. It goes beyond just eliminating paper and making things more efficient, you start to address public safety as well, I think a lot of times with these agencies.

Kevin:

Yes, you’re exactly correct. A lot of times what we do too is that sometimes the legislative body will actually create something in electronic form that we can develop some sort of automated way to take that data and import and update the records in OnBase, those are things that we look at as well.

We certainly do that when it comes to prosecution for instance where the state might issue, here’s the updated codes from our legislature here or they might put one out every few months with the new codes. We happen to go to actually take that in and update the prosecutors systems that are using OnBase. So they have the most up to date criminal codes that they can use and they don’t have to go in and look into a book or do some sort of search, because that’s one of the things that criminals sometimes get off on technicalities because somebody’s misapplied the wrong criminal code to it, or didn’t have the most updated criminal code and somebody gets off the hook because of it. So those are things that we wanna avoid and it does become a public safety issue.

Kate:

Wow.

Kevin:

So next is number 14, one of the cool things about OnBase is it allows you to transition your work processes to a digital flow so a lot of government agencies are not, obviously they’re reaching trade show. Where a lot of agencies said hey we are imaging our documents were storing them in document managing system, but we’re still doing a lot of things manually and to keep asking the question, what’s next? What can we do to make this more efficient? Some of them are still skating backwards into the system and printing them out on paper and running the paper on the organization and then scanning it back into process of those stamps and things that attach to it.

It sounds ridiculous, but if you don’t have the tools to do it, that’s your only option. So one of the strong points about OnBase is that it contains a highly conservable workflow engine that allows you to automate all those processes and take a lot of those steps digital whether it’s stamping a document, whether it’s robbing it from one desk to another desk and just taking up some of that float time that a file is just sitting on somebody’s desk just waiting to be handed over to another person’s desk. It doesn’t happen until somebody gets to it, all those things that makes a process much more inefficient OnBase takes a lot of it out of the process.

So now with the click of a button a lot of things, the 3, 4, 5 things you need to do manually, now you can actually click a button and have those being done automatically. And this is critically important so I’ll give you a simple example, think about your manager in a particular department, you put in a requisition to buy some new chairs, some new furniture, supplies or whatever that is. Invoice comes in to the finance or the administration office, they need you to approve that. So one of the great things about OnBase is that that invoice can come in, it can be quickly reviewed by somebody in accounting and they can click a button and it says need to be reviewed, OnBase takes a look and says oh this is purchase order 456, looks up into your accounting system, this is requested by Jane Smith, over in this department, so it routes it over to Jane Smith, sends her an email, hey can you approve this and right with an [00:08:18] (up look), Jane can look at the invoice say yes we’ve got all the supplies, click a button to approve, automatically comes back to the accounted supervisor for proper processing and payment and that can happen within seconds, with two clicks of a button as opposed to the current process which a lot of people do.

Where there either inner office mail the invoice over, they’ll make a photocopy [inaudible 00:08:39] get lost, or they’ll scan it and attach it to an email, send it off to Jane and then when Jane gets the email, sends it back and then maybe Jane sees the email [inaudible 00:08:48] did I send this back or not? And that confusion exists, and sometimes it’ll send an approval twice, so there’s all kinds of things that are happening along with that and OnBase can take all that confusion and all that extra time that’s wasted and shorten it up.

So think about this if you’re in a multi-department agency, city, or county or state, where the agencies are spread all around, different agencies, you can bring a lot of those processes under control and make them seem less. So you’re not looping paper anymore, you’re not using email which is almost like a modern form day of sneakernet. It’s now something that can become so much more efficient and now you have a full audit trail of your entire process of when that invoice went out or when that form went out, or whatever it is that your doing, it now becomes streamlined and automated.

So number 15, and this is kind of the wrapping up of the section of it, think about how many Microsoft access databases you have, think of how many excel spreadsheets that you’re using for auditing purposes and checklists, and those different things. But you wish there was a better way to do it where multiple people can actually access it and it can just track who made the different entries. Well OnBase case management tool is designed exactly for that to replace those Microsoft active databases, to replace those excel checklists that you’re using and create a unified view of what’s happening for something you need to audit or something you need to track like a IP ticketing system for instance instead of using an active database. You can use OnBase and have multiple people access it at the same time, where they’re having to think through some logistical nightmare that sometimes comes along for access or having a shared excel spreadsheet.

A great thing about this is is that it’s a tool, case management tool, but we’ve been talking about logic and [inaudible 00:10:42] and things you can track, a lot of case management solutions can be drag and drop designs, quite configurable as opposed to some other applications where it requires a lot of custom coding to develop. And it requires a programmer to do, a lot of these small applications can be done all within a gooey interface within OnBase. So that’s number 15.

Alright number 16, bring your Freedom of Information Act, your FOIA act and your Public Access Request for Documents Under Control. This is one of the big challenge for a lot of agencies, especially in this day and age, where with [inaudible 00:11:24] going on, people are just asking for more and more and more information. And some agencies have full time people, staff was just taking those requests and putting them in the queue and setting them up so that they can be handled and some agencies are a year behind being able to satisfy and respond to those requests, just because they’re so time consuming, they take so much time and the information’s located in so many different areas.

With a system like OnBase not only can you receive these requests electronically, through a form, through an email or fax and have them automatically go into OnBase to create that next queue item for somebody to take a look at. But if your documents are in OnBase it can make gathering those documents a whole lot easier, which brings up more room for somebody to take a look at some of the content that isn’t stored in OnBase, that’s outside. And we’ll talk about that in a minute, in terms of how you can solve that, but anything that’s within OnBase, within those various departments, sort of [inaudible 00:12:28], economic taxes that [inaudible 00:12:30] information act requests, redact anything that you need too. And you now have a way that you can also electronically deliver that in a secure way, where you can also track to see if somebody is actually downloaded that document or received those documents as well.

So OnBase offers a lot of ways you can bring your Freedom of Information Act and Public Act of Records Request under control, and for a lot of government agencies, they’re racking up thousands of dollars in binds, which actually goes against your budget, but because it’s so hard to even put your arms around, they just see that as a necessary expense, and it really doesn’t need to be. It really could be something that you can bring under control and start this process and those requests or you’re getting them back in time, you’re avoiding those fees and if you rack the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and costs and staffing costs just to manage this. You really need to take a look at OnBase if you don’t have it yet because this is something that can save you a tremendous amount of time.

Kate:

Okay, great.

Kevin:

Alright number 17, to go along with that, so we’ve talked about things which are in OnBase, but what about all the other stuff that is outside of OnBase. So one of the great things is that there’s a tool that actually can take a look at different things that is outside of OnBase, so things that are in your email repository, things that are sitting on file shares, things that are sitting on a SharePoint drive, things that might be sitting on somebody’s computer somewhere that isn’t necessarily in any kind of structured place that makes it easy to find that data and so there are enterprise search tools which are available that can help with that Public Records Request or [inaudible 00:14:20] to a lawsuit, that you need to find data and to be responsive to the other party’s attorneys and those are things that you need to take a look at in terms of what evidence is there.

And so there are also enterprise search tools outside of OnBase that can help you with that and in every place where this has been demoed, if you look at somebody’s social period for instance, you would be surprised how many times that stuff turns up in unprotected areas or things just getting out in loose emails or sitting out in a document somewhere, that’s not under File Share, and its a great way for you to not only secure your data, but find out what’s out there that should be secured, but also a great way for you to find information that you’re looking for that isn’t in within your structured system and being able to put those together to respond to a public records request.

Alright, number 18, we’re almost there! We talked about this briefly before, but OnBase really has a tool to manage HR processes much more efficiently so we can even innovate it with your HR information system or it can become your system of record, that can help you with recruiting and going through process of evaluating your resumes to onboarding and being able to manage those different projects and taxes you have to do, so for example at ImageSoft when somebody has been made to offer the higher accepted, our HR can go in, basically click a button and it creates a project notifying all the departments of all the things that need to be done and tracks when each one has actually been completed, so she doesn’t have to send out a million different emails to everybody to figure what’s been done and what’s not been done.

It’s all tracked within the system and it makes it easy and accountable and it’s at least you can tell what needs to be done before that person starts as well as once they’ve started, making sure all the steps are completed or just making sure that transfers are being handled correctly, we have the government agency, and we see this a lot in different departments like in the police or different unions where somebody goes to transfer from one to another and you have to account for hours and you have to account for seniority and all those different types of things, it helps with that process and also its separation as well too.

So just bringing that whole process under control is really really big, a great way that you can help just to maintain your most important asset, of any government agency is it’s people and being able to help with that process really can just make it much more of a positive environment for you and for the staff within the agencies.

And then number 19, the last one, think about all the engineers and the facilities and the road crews, things that documents keep track or there’s manuals or there’s cab drawings, whether it’s plans different things. And most of these in government agencies now somewhere within there the larger entity has some sort of GIS or geographical information system where they’re looking at different maps, some sort of mapping system they’re using. And being able to, for instance if you’re on a road crew and you go out and you see a pot hole and you maybe need to dig a little bit deeper to actually fix it, and you want to check hey what’s actually underneath this road, and they pull it up on their tablet, they can pull the road map and actually click on it and go down through various layers, and they can see a pipe and maybe pull the plan for that or maybe they can look up previous work orders that are associated with a particular building. Just being able to have documents in OnBase, all your manuals and drawings and work orders stored inside OnBase.

Being able to attach to your mapping system is such a huge benefit to you, think of first responders when they go out, those are also big deals and things that they can do as well. Just having quick access to those drawings and quick access to those maps and quick access to whatever it is that they need to take a look at, work orders too down the path so they can track that. It’s a huge going for cities and counties and state agencies, to help them be more efficient in terms of maintaining the roads and public utilities. So that’s number 19!

Kate:

Excellent, so this is so much great information today Kevin, and again this is all going to be in the show notes, so you can be able to track all of this and get some of those details there if you want them. But if our listeners want to get more information on how ImageSoft and OnBase can help listeners meet their specific needs, what can they do next?

Kevin:

Well they can first of all go to our website, so they can go to imagesoftinc.com that’s imagesoftinc.com/government and there’s all kind of information there and different projects and things that we’ve done so they can read the customers stories and get great information that’s there. Or you can simply call us at 855-533-3366, that’s 855-533-3366. And they will talk to a client communications specialist and we’ll be able to offer them any kind of information. Not everything that we have is on our website, we have a huge volume of stuff that we have, it would just be too much to try to find it on our website, so if you do call us or if you go on our website and use our contact form or you go into our interactive web chat, we have people that are there that can give you some information, case studies, articles, things you might find helpful as you begin to research and think about what are we doing next or what do we do from here?

Kate:

Never heard a response, yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, there’s no response. That could for anything, not just HR but it could be any particular process that you need to go through where you’re dealing with people from the outside, it’s just a way to have seamless communication. That’s just one way in terms using that con figural workflow to simplify those small tasks that we just don’t have systems for out there that you can just pop off the shelf. OnBase provides you with tool and a way that you can do that fairly easily.

Kate:

Excellent, well thank you again Kevin for sharing this information. I think this is just jampacked with ideas for government agencies and I hope this is a jumpstart of the thought process for our government listeners out there.

Thank you everyone for joining us today and if you haven’t already be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we tackle some of the biggest paper based pain points facing organizations today, we’ll see you next time.

Thanks again for joining us today, for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at imagesoftinc.com that’s imagesoftinc.com

Join us next time, where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency, and accomplish your organizations goals.

Government agencies are constantly tasked with doing more with less: less money, less time, and fewer team members. But the information and services that you provide to your constituents is high in demand, which can put you in a tight spot. In part one of a two-part episode, Kevin Ledgister, marketing manager for ImageSoft (a reseller of Hyland’s OnBase solution), shares some quick tips for using OnBase to supercharge your agency’s efficiency.

Read Transcript

Kate Storey:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast where we give you the tips, tricks, and know how, to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

Government agencies are constantly tasked with doing more with less: less money, less time, and fewer team members. But the information and services that you provide to your constituents is at high end demand and that can put you in a tight spot. We know you face quite a few daunting tasks in your daily work, but we also want you to know that there’s hope. Today we’re here to share ways to meet requirements without losing your mind and maybe even improve your workflow at the same time. So, if you work in a government agency, this podcast episode is for you.

Whether it’s a small benefit like improving processes to help cut costs during bill time, or putting the technology in place for a larger project such as a searchable, online public document repository, there’s so many different ways to be able leverage technology to benefit government agencies. Here today to shed some light on some of these benefits is Kevin Ledgister, Marketing Manager for ImageSoft. Since ImageSoft is a reseller of Hyland’s OnBase Solution, he’ll be sharing 19 quick tips today for using OnBase to supercharge your agencies efficiency.

Kevin, welcome to the show.

Kevin Ledgister:

Hi, Kate. It’s actually great to be back again talking to an audience about all the ways that they can increase their productivity by transitioning to a paperless process. I will say this, though, it’s important to note that even though this is focused around what government agencies are doing, I think even if you’re not in a government agency, maybe you’re in an insurance environment or some other environment and you’re subscribing to a podcast or listening in but you may find some new tips that may be applicable to your organization as well. I just want to make sure that everyone in the audience knows that they may find some golden nuggets in here as well.

Kate:

Excellent. That’s a good point. And before we dive in I also wanted to make a note that all of this information is going to be available in the show notes afterwards. So, if you’re not able to take notes right now, don’t worry. We’ll have everything available for you in the show notes afterwards.

All right, Kevin, so let’s go ahead and dive in. Tell me, what are the top ways that government agencies can leverage a technology solution like OnBase?

Kevin:

Awesome. Well, I’ve got 19 of them because it’s the year 2019. I’m just gonna run through these and Kate, feel free to join in and add anything to that. Let’s dive in.

The first one I’m gonna talk about, number one is audits. It’s not usually the most fun one that we like to talk about but a detail audit if you have an OnBase system is that you can have a detailed audit of the entire process, who touched the document, who looked at it, who accessed it, who processed and emailed it, anything that you want to do. It just makes you so much more transparent for auditors wanting to take a look at how did something get processed, how was this actually handled, and it just reduces the burden on staff and employees in terms of having to track all those things and document everything. It just becomes a seamless way to do that. So that’s number one, making your audits that much more easier and streamlined and making outside auditors less intrusive in terms of interrupting your day. That’s number one.

Kate:

Excellent.

Kevin:

Number two is to find information to serve your constituents faster. That’s always one of the big challenges in a government agency is when constituents are calling in or emailing you and they’re looking for information. Being able to find information quicker is so much better. If you think about any typical government agency you have file cabinets of documents, you’ve got CAD drawings. For instance if you’re a county or a city, there’s all kinds of invoices and different transactional emails that are stored in a million different places. Responding back to constituents oftentimes takes hours or days just to find all that information and to report back and say, “Hey, here’s the status of where things are at” or “Here’s the information that you’re looking for” and being able to provide that.

Being able to have one system where all that information is stored inside one single system, whether it’s a project that you worked on or a building, whether it’s an employee file, whether it’s an invoice, whatever it’s going to be, or land records, having that all inside one system makes it so much simpler and so much easier for you to respond quickly back to your constituents and provide that exceptional level of customer service.

Kate:

Yeah. I would imagine that the expectations are growing from the constituent side that this is going be easier to access, that they’re going to get a faster response. That’s probably a pretty important one.

Kevin:

It is an important one, especially in the day of, we’re in a mobile age now where a lot of government agencies are putting things up for people to interact with them from a mobile device. But at the same time internally, they’re not always prepared for the mobile world. Having a system like that that can help them prepare for the mobile world and being that responsive just makes their lives so much easier.

Kate:

That’s a great point.

Kevin:

At number three, not a fun one because we’re talking about bill paying but for a lot cities, and county, and state agencies, being able to process and pay their bills faster, and quicker, and more accurately is so much more helpful. Not in just in terms of community relations but also sometimes there may be discounts that a government agency can take advantage of by paying a bill early as opposed to paying it late. You may even have a service-level agreements or policies within your department that says, “Bills should be paid within X number days.” Being able to have that process become much more controllable, being able to have those early payments bubble up to the top quicker, makes it so much better for you. It conserves some of your budget and it also makes just dealing with your vendors and your partners so much more of a better experience for them. That’s another one just in terms of bringing that whole invoice accounts payable process under control. It’s so much better for a government agency. That is number three.

Number four, think about all the millions of little tasks that you have that you’ve got this high-power computer sitting on your desk and yet you’re still doing a lot things manually and there’s no software application that you can go out and buy a solution for that takes care of those small pieces. That’s one of the advantages of having on OnBase system is that a lot of those little tasks that are time-consuming, that might involve 10, 12, different steps, that you would love to automate in the days of a computer that we wish would take six or seven of those off of your plate and have the computer does those, those are a lot of times the things that we identify with an OnBase that can take that off of your load, so it frees up to do the things which are more important and much more valuable in terms of what you bring to the table.

It allows the OnBase system to use the configurable workflow piece of it to actually hand off some of those other mundane tasks, repeatable tasks that you’re doing and have [inaudible 00:07:31] take care of it. That’s something that can make your day so much more peaceful, so much more satisfying that you get to do more valuable work and you’re allowing the dream of having computer do some of that mundane stuff that we’ve always wanted to get rid of but never could, now you have a way to do that.

Kate:

Yeah, I can imagine. It’s a lot of those little tasks that end up taking up such a big chunk of your day. And it makes it harder to get to the more meaningful work for the day. That’s great to know that you can automate those little tasks and have them off your back.

Kevin:

Yeah. For instance, a very simple one might be just a notification of receipt, for instance, where let’s say you’re in HR and you want to just alert everybody that sends you a resume that you’ve received their resume and it’s being considered, and once you’ve been considered, to have an email that goes out and says, “Thank you for your time but at this time we’re considering other candidates.” Whatever that is. Just something simple as that so that internally if you click a button that says, “Hey, I’m gonna reject this application” or “I’m gonna table it for another time,” the system will automatically send an email out for you. It’s such a huge time-saver, but such a big one that let’s people know what’s happening in your organization where you don’t actually have to type up the email and go into Outlook and type it up and maybe find that one that you’ve got saved and recopy the template over.

It just, it stores that template for you and just care of that. That’s just another way in terms of how you can free up by looking at all those little tasks and automating those so that you can focus more on … in the case of HR, for instance, looking at actual applicants and interviewing them and making those calls, and setting up appointments as opposed to sitting there and typing endless number of emails. Or in some cases some agencies don’t even do that all and people get frustrated because hey, “I applied and I never heard back from them.”

Kate:

Never heard a response, yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, there’s no response. That could for anything, not just HR but it could be any particular process that you need to go through where you’re dealing with people from the outside, it’s just a way to have seamless communication. That’s just one way in terms using that con figural workflow to simplify those small tasks that we just don’t have systems for out there that you can just pop off the shelf. OnBase provides you with tool and a way that you can do that fairly easily.

Kate:

Excellent.

Kevin:

Let’s see, next one, number five. This is automatically linking your documents and content with your administrative system. So for instance, if you’re a government agency, whether you’re in HR, whether you’re in planning and public works, maybe you just have a county system that is just managing all of your data in there in terms of your accounting, in terms of plan records, whatever it is that you’re tracking in your systems. A lot of time we’ll have that data that’s in that system and then the documents exist in a file cabinets or they’re maybe scanned and stored on a file share somewhere, where maybe you have the basic document management system that you’ve been storing documents in, and to find [inaudible 00:10:48] documents you have to go in, open up another application, and do an actual manual search.

So one of the things that OnBase does that can make your life so much easier, and we’ve got many codeless ways of doing this, where it doesn’t actually touch your key administration systems, where you might be looking, for instance, [inaudible 00:11:06] in your administration system, for instance, you’re looking up an invoice, and you doubleclick on that invoice number, and up pops a window with that invoice. It’s from OnBase, but the user doesn’t even think about, or even realize it’s from OnBase. It just feels like it’s an extension of your administration system.

Or it could be a project where it pulls up, for instance, the project documents that you may have that are associated with that in an Excel spreadsheet that are associated with a particular project. So whatever administration system they’re using to manage your government agencies work [inaudible 00:11:40] to seamlessly tie the documents and [inaudible 00:11:44] with the data that you have in your administration system that makes for a seamless row of presenting that information to you in a way that just makes sense. And it makes you able to make those decisions quicker and you have better information, so you have better decisions, and faster decisions, by lumping those two together.

Number six. Just being able to track your physical records. That’s another big thing. In some government agencies there are laws that are [inaudible 00:12:13] that still require you to maintain paper copies of certain documents, and you can’t get rid of those but your office … it’s hard to store some of those within your office space, and you have a warehouse somewhere, or you’re storing them somewhere else, and you want to be able to just track those, and a lot of people have bought third-party systems that don’t do very well because now you’ve got your electronic documents in one system, and you’ve got your data in another system, and then you’ve got your digital documents being tracked in another system. And the three aren’t really talking to each other.

So by being able to create entries into your OnBase system that tracks your physical documents, and being able to check them in and check them out, and who has them, and where are they at, and being able to control that process, and if you do a search for documents, having those physical documents being listed alongside the electronic documents can be a huge time-saver, and it also makes you very aware and very responsive to any constituent requests in terms of having that information.

So it’s just another great way that you can manage they physical documents alongside with your electronic documents, and then when it comes time to [inaudible 00:13:25] or destroy those documents at some point in time, you also have a cohesive way of managing that, as well.

Number seven. Think about all your council meetings and preparing the agenda. One of the big things about OnBase is that it has a whole agenda management platform within it, so that you can manage agendas for board meetings, and council meetings, and it can record votes, and you can track the video along with that. And then also for the poor person that I feel sorry for that has to do it manually today in terms of tracking all the agenda items and putting all the associated documentation together, creating those big agenda packets to hand over to the different council members is a huge challenge. If there’s a last-minute change [crosstalk 00:14:13] can be very time-consuming to handle that.

So having an automated system that makes it easy to adjust not only the agenda in terms of which items appear first, or being able to add one at the last minute, add associated documents at the push of a button be able to automatically generate those packets, huge time-saver, makes the process so much more manageable, and it provides you a way eventually to share that out with the public, as well, if they want to see that, and maybe they want to go to a certain spot in the video to when they’re talking about an item of discussion, those on the agenda that they have an interest in makes it easy for them to jump around in the minutes video as well. It totally can revolutionize your whole agenda management process for a government agency.

Another way that OnBase can make your life so much better in 2019.

Kate:

I feel like, I’m sorry to jump in but I think that this is one of those things, this is such a unique way of being able to use this system, that I think a lot of agencies, government or not, don’t really think about. When you have a larger organization like this, or like you said, something where you have to report out to the public, putting together an agenda and having people stay in formed and everything, and sometimes there is a very important, that’s why I laughed when you said about the last-minute change [inaudible 00:15:32] they have to change something and add it in and they’ve already made, what, at least dozens of copies if not hundreds depending on the size of the audience that they may be expecting or the size of the city that they may be working with.

What a huge issue that could become. Just one little change, but it’s an important one. I think this is a really, one of those ways that people may not have thought of how to use technology to benefit their agency. It’s a small thing but what a difference it can make when you’re franticly making copies before a pm council meeting, you know? That’s a really interesting way of using that.

Kevin:

You’re absolutely right, Kate. And it you think about it, ’cause there are systems out that does agenda management, and it’s great, but the challenges you’re faced with is, what about all the supporting documentation that has to go alongside the agenda item.

Kate:

Absolutely.

Kevin:

Now you have to export those, or you have to call the people in Public Works, or you have to talk to people in Finance, you have to pull up all those documents together manually and attach it to that agenda item, either by scanning them in or managing hundreds of emails to make sure you get all the right attachments done, as opposed to if you’re already [inaudible 00:16:55] information in OnBase and confident OnBase, then you can pull that and attach it to those agenda items much easier, and it just becomes much manageable and easier to control.

There’s a huge [inaudible 00:17:06] to that and you’re right, it’s an area that we often don’t think about, but it’s one that can have a big impact just in terms of making the agenda process much more easier to manage and even more transparent to the public.

Kate:

Absolutely.

Kevin:

Awesome. Number eight. This is a fun one. Virtually every government agency has a ton of forms that are online, and a lot of those forms are just in a basic PDF form that you can kind of fill out online but you have to print them out and then mail them in or walk them into the government office. Sometimes people will create a HTML webform that you can fill certain things in. But the big challenge is what do you do with those forms that are state forms or official forms that you just can’t change? And they’re not designed to be processed electronically. You have to either fill them in online or print them out, or you print them out and fill them in manually with pen and ink and mail those in. It’s not very conducive to that process.

One of the great things about OnBase is that there’s a new tool that allows you to talk those PDF forms you really can’t do anything with and make those forms come alive where data can be stored and merged with that form and then submitted electronically. Or even if somebody has to print them out, at least now they’re printed out in a format where it’s machine print where you can use tools within OnBase to automatically read that information and process it much more accurately. And so that’s a huge bonus, something that we’re beginning to work with some of our customers on right now, we’re thinking that this is going to be a huge bonus for government agencies while we’re in this transition period where we’ve moved from these fixed PDF forms into something more dynamic and electronic.

This is a huge step in between that can help automate a lot of government agency processes. And almost every government process starts with some form of a form. And a lot of them are PDF forms that have been created and so this just gives you a whole new way to process those forms electronically and just simplify that process altogether. A huge tool for you. I think if you’re listening and you process a lot of forms, you got 20, 30, 40, 50 forms on your website that you’re just getting in via paper and raw PDF forms, I just want to let you know that there is hope and there is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is a different and a better way that you can do this.

Alright. Number nine. This is a small one but something that if you do this every day in terms of getting in emails or you need to store the actual email somewhere as part of a record because somebody made a commitment or a promise, or you need a record of that transaction of that discussion in an email, or if you received an attachment and today you’re taking that attachment you’re either printing it off and scanning it in, or it’s something that you have to save the attachment to your desktop and then open up some other [inaudible 00:20:11] and attach it to a document management system.

OnBase has a way right within Outlook that you can save an email directly into OnBase and also, or, save the attachments. You can do either email or attachment or both, or one or the other, and it’s just a nice, seamless way that you can store emails that have a record of a transaction or a record of a conversation along with the transaction so that when somebody looks at this later on, they can see the email discussion that went along with it, they can see the attachments [inaudible 00:20:43] documents, and that’s all contained within OnBase.

It just makes it easier for you to go back and refer and if something gets audited, or if somebody comes back and says, “Hey, I never made that promise” or “I never made that claim,” or made that assertion that they were actually going to perform XYZ, you now have a record if it’s done. Or if you sent something out saying, “Hey, this is something we’re willing to do” or “Here’s a record of what we said” in terms of a final judications of a case, it’s something that can also be thrown into the record along with OnBase, as well.

Much easier than trying to go back to an email backup and trying to search through everybody’s emails and [inaudible 00:21:25] big, massive search, you now can just automatically store it as part of that transaction, as part of that record and have that record, especially if you’re about to retire or move on to another job, now there’s that record in place that somebody can always go back and refer to and say, “Oh, so and so, when she was here, this is what she said here’s a record of the conversation with a constituent and now we have more data that we can go by, as opposed to somebody just taking notes on the side, maybe have an incomplete set of notes. Great tool to have. OnBase [inaudible 00:21:59] within your Outlook client that makes it easier for you to get those email attachments that are important to store.

Kate:

I have to say, that is a really important point because with the turnover right now that we’re seeing a lot of baby boomers retiring, and a lot of these people that have been in these agencies and in these organizations for a very long time, and now we’re seeing massive waves of retirement. That’s a really important point because it’s that information transfer, that transfer of expertise that is making it, it could be really difficult if you were not able to have that transfer of information in person, being able to record all that information and have that available, that’s a really powerful thing and I think really important for what we’re currently looking at right now.

Kevin:

It is. Some agencies, and we see this sometimes in the insurance industry, for instance, where when they have a claims discussion, they want to record the conversation and store that in as well, so that’s it’s great you can do that as well. But the other thing with that, along with OnBase, and we see this just with our own experience that the average government agency is going to experience anywhere from 11% to 17% turnover a year. Some years may have none and other years you might see more. If it’s election year you tend to see a bigger number of changeover so that factors into it as well, too.

So there’s always going to be, besides retirement, there’s always just going to be turnover. And every time there’s people turning over there’s always a loss of information, a loss of content, a loss of knowledge, and this is just one of the ways that you can help preserve some of that information and some of that knowledge and experience as to what happens.

Alright. So let’s take a look at number ten. Number ten is taking your [inaudible 00:23:54] process electronic. And this is super, super, super important for government agencies, anyone that needs to manage the buildings and permitting and applications, and looking at plans. OnBase will provide you a way to take that electronic [inaudible 00:24:11] where plans can be submitted to a portal. Electronically it goes into a workflow queue where internal inspectors and engineers can take a look at those plans, markup, they knows those plans right within OnBase, and then updates the portal again automatically and the outside contractors can grab ahold of those notes and suggest revisions and take a look at those, and send back revised plans.

One of the great things about the plan review process is that there’s a tool in there that can automatically look at changes. So if somebody submits a plan and says, “Hey, we want to build this structure on a spot of land,” and you write back and say, “Oh, by the way, you don’t have enough accessible parking spaces for the size of the building,” and they come back and say, “Hey, we made that fix,” but they may have made five or six other fixes, as well, and didn’t tell you about it, this tool can actually automatically identify those changes and let you know visually so you can see where those changes are and inspect those changes so somebody doesn’t try to slip something by you where you may not have noticed.

It’s just great to have a tool like that, not only to make the back and forth that happens with plans and then be able to track the [inaudible 00:25:28] so it’s probably a worthwhile process, you can request a final set of [inaudible 00:25:33] plans or sometimes things change through the middle of the construction process that nobody accounted for and a city inspector comes along and says, “Oh, by the way you need to make this change. We didn’t catch this during the review initially but now that we can see it visually constructed, your electrical panel needs to be moved over by six feet because it’s too close to your furnace,” whatever it is you need to have those changes being tracked and then a final set of plans being submitted.

Having that process from end to end to help you with that can just streamline that plan making process tremendously.

Kate:

Now that was a lot of good information and we’re only halfway through that list. So we hope you’ll join us next time with Part 2 of Nineteen Ways that Government Agencies and Others can Benefit from Using OnBase in 2019.

Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at imagesoftinc.com. That’s imagesoftinc.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency, and accomplish your organizations goals.

Incorporating a secure, streamlined solution that brings true visibility and efficiency to daily tasks can make a huge difference for understaffed and overworked government agencies. Hyland’s Kevin Albrecht takes us through some of the biggest questions government agencies need to ask themselves, and help us understand how leveraging technology can help eliminate wasted time and paper each day.

Read Transcript

Kate Storey:

Welcome to the Paperless Productivity Podcast, where we give you the tips, tricks, and knowhow to solve your biggest workflow challenges and bring greater productivity into your workplace every day.

Hey, did you hear the one about the government agency that went paperless? They saved hundreds of hours each week and increased their customer satisfaction rating at the same time. Okay, so it’s not much of a punchline, but the results speak for themselves. Government work is no laughing matter, but incorporating a secure, streamlined solution that brings true visibility and efficiency to daily tasks can help bring a smile to everyone’s face.

Today, we’re talking with Kevin Albrecht, Hyland senior customer adviser for government. Kevin is going to take us through some of the biggest questions government agencies need to ask themselves and help us understand how leveraging technology can help eliminate wasted time and paper each day. Welcome to the podcast today, Kevin.

Kevin Albrecht:

It’s great to be here, Kate. Thanks.

Kate:

Great. Okay, so when we talk about technology solutions for government, what kinds of systems are we talking about?

Kevin:

That’s a great question because there’s a lot of different things out there. And often you’ll hear people just say, well, we’re looking for digital transformation. And I always say, ah, indeed, there’s car companies that are also talking about digital transformation. So what we’re talking about here is straight to it, getting paper out of government processes, streamlining their operations. We’re talking about document and records management.

One of the things that often happens in government, they have these great backend systems that either they purchase from somebody or they built themselves 10 years ago. They’re really good at holding structured content, things that fit in little boxes, nice and neatly names, numbers, amount, ID, information like that. But what they’re really bad at is managing content or document information that’s associated with those little boxes. So we’re going to talk a little bit about today, about really how to get rid of that paper, streamline your processes and a better leverage the IT investments that you’ve made.

Kate:

That’s great. And so, in that realm, what are some tasks that especially benefit from a paperless process in the government setting? Once you go outside of those little boxes, like you said, what types of work do government agencies tend to deal with the most when they have to combine all of those systems?

Kevin:

The hard part in government, there are literally tens of thousands of different things that government agencies do. And you can’t even just say things like, well, this is a solution for a department of transportation because even in like that one agency, they have all kinds of different offices and they do all types of different things. So it gets kind of confusing about what should I look for. But when you really boil it down, in government, there are three of things that every program and process involves. They either involve people or businesses applying to participate or share something with the government agency. There’s things or assets and facilities that government has. So that could be snow plows, that could be buildings, that could be manhole covers that they have to have a tremendous amount of documentation about.

And then there are investigations and inspections into people and things. And so, if you look at everything that your government agency does, they really almost, they fit into those three categories.

Kate:

Okay. So what does the life cycle of a government document look like when you look at all of these different areas there? If you could take us through the process of what happens when someone initiates an action with a form or a document regardless of what area of the agency you’re working in, what kind of happens from there?

Kevin:

Sure. There’s kind of five basic steps to every government program. And as you had said, everything is always kicked off with some sort of form or application. I kind of joke sometimes like even someone going to county jail, whether they know it or not, they’re technically applying for a government program kind of beyond their own wishes. But they’re initiating that with some sort of document that has to have supporting information with it. It’s sent in to a government agency where it’s collected. They have to make sure that all the correct information is contained. The next step is evaluation, where it’s routed through some sort of workflow to different people who are going to make a decision about that application. There might be some interaction back and forth between the applicant or even internally to make sure that everyone qualifies. And then a decision either to approve or reject that application.

So again, whether it’s an application for someone going into a prison or applying for food stamps or applying for some sort of public, other types of public assistance, those things all have to be done and the requirements reviewed. And then what will happen once they’re approved, that’ll kind of continue to go in a circle. There’s always what’s called a re-certification process where you have to determine, do you still want to participate in this program, do you still qualify and is the government agency going to provide that to you? So while they do, that keeps going into an endless circle until eventually the last step is disclosed. And the person either no longer qualifies or no longer wants to participate. It could even be the snow plow no longer exists and we don’t want to have it so we don’t have to keep track of that anymore.

But in government, we always have document retention policies that we have to adhere to. So you can’t just get rid of everything just because someone’s not receiving that benefit from the government anymore. There are strict retention policies and you have to make sure that your documents are adhering to those.

Kate:

It seems like the life cycle of these documents is much longer than maybe some others. Like you said, there’s some things where this could go on for years or like you said it, you need to keep that retention of that document, that information. So it sounds like the life cycle of each document in every step of the process, it’s not a one and done, you know, you fill out one paper and then it’s gone. So I would imagine that’s a challenge for governments to keep track of all that. So what are some of the other most common pain points that you hear from government agencies and where are they really in need of a different solution?

Kevin:

When you talk about that life cycle, the worst way to manage the life cycle is through paper information. And sometimes they’ll even think that they’re, okay, well we use spreadsheets or we use email. That is one of the most inefficient ways to keep track of your programs.

Kate:

Why is that?

Kevin:

Well, they’re running into things like lost forms. I’ll ask government agencies all the time, how much time do you spend looking for applications or documents? How much time do you spend waiting on someone else to finish with that manila folder that’s sitting on their desk while they try to get to it. Lots of times agencies will talk about here’s how long it takes to process applications. The problem is it’s not necessarily how long it takes to physically process an application or to look at that information, that processing time is in fact how long it takes for someone to get to that application themselves. So what we want to do is provide you a complete view, the end to end. So when you just have information in paper format or in that structured content in those backend systems, you’re not receiving that complete view of the applicant, right, of knowing all the information that’s associated with them and multiple people being able to work on it at the same time.

Kate:

Yeah, I’d imagine it’s connecting all of those dots all together. But also, when you mentioned about the Excel spreadsheets, the first thing I thought of was, many different versions of that exist depending on how many different people within that agency are touching that document. So they might have one version-

Kevin:

They have no insights to into that.

Kate:

Yeah. It’s not easily connected necessarily. Yeah, that makes sense. So some government agencies might believe that they already have their systems automated running efficiently just like you were saying with those spreadsheets or even paper documents. Whether or not that includes a tech component. So, how can an agency better understand the value that that centralized technology solution is going to bring to their organization? How do they start to see the benefit of connecting all those dots?

Kevin:

Yeah, it’s exactly connecting all those dots. That’s a great of putting it, again, because it is how complete of a view do you have to this information? Take any one of the programs that you manage and say how many different silos do I have of information? Is it contained in spreadsheets, is there also some information in paper format? Are there ancient filing cabinets? Are there individuals in your organization that if something were to happen to them, you would lose all the information that someone knows? So when you kind of have these silos or separate, disparate silos of information, you also have a huge problem with security. How are you able to make sure that people are only taking actions that they should be, and what type of reporting or auditability do you have on your process?

Kate:

Yeah, I would imagine that confidentiality is a real issue with those documents and ensuring the confidentiality of some of those documents. When you don’t have a technology solution in place. It’s probably pretty hard to make sure that some sensitive information isn’t being seen outside of where it needs to be seen. So, technology solutions for government are going to help to increase that security as well. Correct?

Kevin:

Absolutely. It’s a key aspect. Anyone go talk to the director of information technology in your government agency about their concerns of getting what’s called PII or personal identifying information out into the public when it shouldn’t be. I mean, that’s of the utmost importance.

Kate:

So we’ve already talked about some of that, that safety factor, the efficiency factor. So, do you have an idea of what the average time and financial cost is for the typical government agency when it comes to managing all these documents? Like you said, all these different silos, all these different people that are involved in the process. Is there an idea like of an average time and financial cost that’s associated with this?

Kevin:

That can be difficult, again, because of the tens of thousands of different things they do. But I can give one example that I always like to tell people about, there’s a process called Freedom of Information Act or public records requests. And these numbers are kind of staggering. I was talking to one customer one time and they were saying they’re spending 260 minutes a day simply looking at public records requests, just trying to fulfill manual information that was being sent to them or they were receiving an email printing it off and handling that manually. But they were also spending a thousand minutes a day simply copying documents rather than processing those electronically.

So, one of the ways to look at that is to look at how much manual time are you spending. And even simply taking the cost of what is the person’s salary that’s doing that. And it’s not necessarily about eliminating head count. It’s about doing things more efficiently. I was talking to one state agency and they received a lot of applications through fax. They have this person whose job was to sit on a stool next to the fax machine and capture the applications as they came in. And I was telling them, I was like, well, you know, we could import that fax electronic, it’s already electronic, we don’t have to actually print it out. You can just route that into a document management system. And they said, well, you know, I hate to say, what do we do with this guy? I said, you could have him actually processing applications rather than just capturing information and then sending it to where he thinks it needs to be.

So it’s looking at that head count or that time wasted, or even how much space are you using for filing cabinets. Think about the square footage that you have that just to have paper resting somewhere on the off chance that you might want to go try to find it.

Kate:

And I would imagine then that that leads a little bit into kind of the HR side of things as well is making sure that your team members are really feeling like they’re contributing and that they’re a meaningful part of this process and everything. I would imagine that by integrating some of these technology solutions, they’re able to not only increase their efficiency, which is good overall for the agency, but that person individually feels perhaps I would imagine a greater sense of job satisfaction because they are a greater part of the process. So I would imagine that it touches that maybe in a slight way as well. So, that’s an interesting angle.

Kevin:

I was going to say, one of the other things to think about, I mean, we will always have paper in government processes, right? Anybody that ever comes in and tells a government agency, we’re going to eliminate all of this doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Sometimes you have to provide for that avenue for someone to walk into a lobby and hand over an application that’s been filled out by hand. So what you’re needing to do is break down those processes and how you can streamline each of those most efficiently.

Kate:

That makes a lot of sense, yeah. And so that kind of leads into, you know, what else I was wondering is, you know, probably a question that is asked a lot is how can a single platform serve all those different needs going from that paper application to going to all these different people within that need to have their input into it to that final close of the cycle there. So how could a single platform do all of that? How can it best fit them?

Kevin:

And that’s the great thing that, you know, and I love about this type of document management platform, is that you really can configure it to meet the needs of your agency and all of your different processes. So rather than and buying individual pieces of software to manage individual agencies, having that single platform allows you to configure to what your needs are. So you can start out with a very basic, I’m just going to capture documents and I’m going to store them electronically, right? That you can absolutely go in and do something very lightweight, very easy, and just start there, right? You don’t have to map out an entire process. You can grow into a full workflow where you’re processing documents in parallel, you’re routing things based on case worker workloads or even managing them by which language are they coming in at. You can do lots of different things, but having something that can be configured to meet what your specific agency needs is the key.

Kate:

Absolutely. And so, we talked a lot about managing those internal demands. Let’s talk a little bit about in terms of constituents. So what kind of benefits do you think that government constituents could begin to see from having that centralized technology solution managing all of this?

Kevin:

Well, there’s certainly that, there’s multiple generations of people that are interacting with an agency. And government agencies have to be able to provide access to each of them. So, there could be an 80 year old that feels most comfortable walking into a lobby and waiting. But you also have to look at things that they’re demanding like websites that have fillable forms on them, or even mobile access for me to be able to check on the status of my application. So you have to be able to look at how often you’re doing things like receiving an email and thinking you’re doing great because we’re allowing our constituents to email things into us. But then your process is to go print off that email and then continue on with the manila folder that has a checklist piece of paper stapled to the inside that you start checking things off.

So, more and more constituents are expecting to have instant access to information, and they also are becoming very frustrated with having to submit the same documents more than once. So if I’ve already sent to you information about my court case or if I’ve already sent to you my driver’s license or birth certificate, I shouldn’t have to send that to you again because every time I do that, I get very worried that I’m never going to receive it back. Tell someone who was newly become a US citizen that you have to mail in their citizenship certificate. It is the last thing they’re ever going to want to do.

Kate:

Absolutely, yeah. So, what are some of these questions that government agencies, thinking about all of these different elements from the internal management to working with constituents and meeting those demands and those expectations that are coming there, what are some of the questions that government agencies can begin to ask themselves to understand how a technology solution could benefit their processes both internally and externally?

Kevin:

Yeah, I would say, certainly start with kind of getting a handle on the amount of paper applications that are coming in. But it really involves getting in touch with the workers, the people that they’re hands on dealing with these things each day. Asking them how much time do you spend waiting on something to get to you? How much time do you spend looking for information? Not only just those people-centric, again, think about all the processes that you have that involve the facilities or the assets. Talk to your public works department about when you are looking for training manuals and repair history and incident reports that all surround the same piece of equipment, how much time do you spend looking for that and what value would you find having it in one single repository.

Looking at what honestly, what are your goals for processing times, and being honest with yourself about is it simply how long it takes for that record or that application to get to the top of the list to have it be it’s turned to be processed, or how much time can you shave off, I guess is the way to say, of the actual processing of an application if it were able to be done electronically.

Kate:

Okay. Once these agencies start to ask these questions and they start to see that having a single source for their paper and their processes can have a really positive effect on the way they’re able to manage their workloads and better serve their constituents, what’s the next step from here? So how’d they begin that road to going paperless and finding where it fits out for their organization?

Kevin:

I would say certainly reach out to ImageSoft. They work with them a lot, as a partner with Hyland. But I would say that next step, is I would tell everyone look for the paper in your organization. Start right there and try to envision what your roadmap is going to be. You don’t have to figure out your entire streamlined process all at once. Think about what simply capture electronic capture of information and storing it electronically, what would that do? Set for yourself some realistic goals and then people like myself can help work with you to provide that vision of not only what you first have in mind, that first process that you see. But how you can again leverage the same investment into this platform into all those other hundreds of thousands of lines of business.

We have customers, where honestly, we don’t know everywhere we’re being used because they see the value in this technology and they continue to roll that out themselves. And that ultimately is the goal so that they’re empowered and that they know how to address their pain points themselves.

Kate:

That’s excellent. Well, thank you so much for giving us that overview today, Kevin, and helping us to better understand the many benefits that a paperless system can bring to government agencies. I think this was really insightful.

Kevin:

That was great. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Kate:

Great. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. And if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Paperless Productivity, where we tackle some of the biggest paper based pain points facing organizations today. We’ll see you next time.

Thanks again for joining us today for this episode of Paperless Productivity. This podcast is sponsored by ImageSoft, the paperless process people, which you can learn more about at imagesoftinc.com, that’s imagesoft I-N-C.com. Join us next time where you’ll learn how to harness the power of technology, supercharge efficiency and accomplish your organization’s goals.